Here again we have the Left, doing as the Left so commonly does.....
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0227-04.htm
Published on Friday, February 27, 2004 by the Boston Globe
Dean, Ex-Manager Battle for Constituency
by Glen Johnson
Is a movement about its leader or the person who put it together?
That question is fueling a behind-the-scenes struggle between Howard Dean and his former campaign manager, Joe Trippi, as they jockey for control of the campaign's bounty of grass-roots supporters and search for personal direction after the former Vermont governor's failed bid for the presidency.
Dean, who dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination this month, has been heading to his campaign headquarters in Burlington, Vt., each day. His agenda has included writing thank-you notes to supporters, surveying his debts, and plotting how to best steer the people who served as the lifeblood of "Dean for America" toward another cause he can lead.
Trippi, who pioneered the campaign's use of the Internet for fund-raising and for building an online political community before quitting Jan. 28 when Dean told him he was placing a chief executive officer over him, has been spending time at his farm in Maryland overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. Not only has he been an ever-present political analyst on television, he has launched a website similar in name to Dean's -- "Change for America" -- and urged Dean's former supporters to follow his lead.
His threefold purpose is to beat President Bush, elect a Democratic Congress, and support local candidates who subscribe to the campaign ideals he helped frame for his former boss and other political outsiders he has backed during his career, including former California governor Jerry Brown and former senator Gary Hart of Colorado.
Trippi yesterday unveiled the "Cummings Creek Compact," so named for his farm, to codify his plan. In doing so, he touched on the same sort of goals Dean is likely to outline next month when he provides details of his organization.
"Howard Dean is a relative newcomer to this insurgent message," said Stuart Rothenberg, an independent political analyst in Washington. "He ended up running as this vehicle for change and a critic of the establishment, but I don't think in Vermont he was known as an outsider or a rabble-rouser, while Trippi always has. He often has worked for the outsider or long shot, so I wouldn't be surprised if Joe felt that he had been doing this his whole life, and he took Dean from nowhere to somewhere on his message, and he wants to institutionalize it in some fashion."
While Trippi has paid homage to Dean on his site and, in one case, posted a link urging his supporters to help retire his former boss's $400,000 campaign debt, their interests have already collided since Dean ended his formal candidacy. And Trippi's stature would only be enhanced if he -- not Dean, who sent out his own appeal this week to eliminate the debt -- was able to marshal the necessary donations.
In announcing Feb. 18 that he was no longer an active presidential candidate, Dean urged his backers to continue supporting progressive candidates and to vote for him, so he could continue accumulating delegates at this July's Democratic National Convention in Boston. "We are not going away. We are staying together, unified -- all of us," he declared.
Four days later, Trippi posted a message on his site's weblog, saying, "This whole notion concerns me greatly."
He went on to explain that Dean would need to garner at least 15 percent of the vote in any state in order to claim a share of convention delegates up for grabs. "My own guess is that without an active candidate campaigning in a state, Howard Dean will likely receive 3 percent to 8 percent of the vote. So it is likely that those launching delegate campaigns will have little or no chance of electing delegates," he wrote.
While Trippi said he did not oppose such efforts, he proclaimed a need to spell out the facts because "we have only 254 days left to make a real change in this country."
That prompted one Dean loyalist, Charles Sullivan of San Francisco, to post a retort: "What is the something? May we offer our thoughts here? My suggestion is a Dean-Gore ticket, combining proven electability with the power of the grass roots."
It is those grass-roots supporters, whether tallied by the 660,000 people who registered on Dean's campaign website as committed supporters, the more than 400,000 people who voted for him at the polls, or the more than 300,000 people who donated to his campaign, who are at the root of the battle between the candidate and his former campaign manager. Dean did not return a call yesterday seeking comment, while Trippi traded voice-mail messages with a reporter seeking his comments.
In launching changeforamerica.com on Feb. 4, Trippi conceded, "I am still trying to figure out what I am actually going to do with the rest of my life." The 47-year-old former aerospace engineer remains a partner in a political consulting firm, Trippi, McMahon & Squier, but he has been casting about for a larger purpose.
"The one thing I know I want to do is continue to do my part to build a community with a mission of changing our country for the better," he wrote in his inaugural weblog posting.
In subsequent writings, he defended himself from criticism that his firm benefited excessively from Dean's heavy advertising expenditures, weighed in on the idea of continuing to accumulate Dean delegates, and wrote philosophically of the relationship between Dean and his backers.
"Whether Howard Dean is elected president or not, there is one truth that will not be changed: He stood on the shoulders of his followers and gave voice to their desire for change, and their need to be involved in making that change -- and in the process he has made his followers into new leaders," Trippi wrote Feb. 14, four days before Dean quit the race. The day Dean quit, he posted another message: "I am a guest on the `Today' show tomorrow morning, so I hope you all watch and continue to spread the word about our new blog!"
Last weekend, Trippi gathered about 40 of his supporters at his farm, where they ate breakfast, worked together to clear brush downed by Hurricane Isabel last fall, and debated the outlines of what would become the Cummings Creek Compact.
"But the most moving moment was just before sunset, when Joe Trippi asked who would be willing to commit to sticking together, to continue to fight for the change that began with Howard Dean's campaign and that so many of us have worked for," one attendee, Mark Sundeen, said in a message posted to the weblog. "Every hand went up."
The compact declared that "Change for America will be a national organization that unites progressive communities and sets an agenda of meaningful reform. . . . We are committed far beyond a single election."
In announcing he was quitting the race, the 55-year-old Dean vowed to "continue to build a new organization, using our enormous grass-roots network, to continue the effort to transform the Democratic Party and to change our country."
He added: "Dean for America will be converted into a new grass-roots organization. We need everybody to stay involved. We are, as we always have, going to look at what you had to say about which directions we ought to be going in, and what we ought to continue to do together."
Since then, Dean and Roy Neel, who replaced Trippi at the campaign's helm, have been working in Vermont to develop an organization for achieving those goals. They have yet to announce the details, but last night, Dean traveled to New Haven to thank his supporters -- and make his first speech as a former candidate.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company
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