It was late June, 2002, in Seattle WA.  I recall, while walking from the International Hostel, where I was staying that night, to the Hilton that early evening, where the Governor was speaking to the King County Democrats, and one of those moments.  They come once in a while living, when you know that choice A leads one way, and this path you are on, say, choice B, leads an entirely different way, and you just know it inside, maybe only in a fleeting moment, but it's there.

"Where's Governor Dean?"  And that easy, I was riding the elevator up to the top, walking down the hall, and into the exclusive room where he was meeting party & donor mixers, one of the first to arrive. I spoke with the Howard twice. At first, to ask him if he was going to run, and to get a straight up answer, (or otherwise I was wasting my time) he said he fully intended to run for President. The second, and this was relatively easy at the time, given the room only had 30 people in it, at the max. I got a hold of his ear, showed him what I'd already done on the net, and told him what we'd do going forward.  

Much has been said about the decentralized and emergent quality of the Howard Dean campaign, and many people, actions and efforts did emerge with the volition to join in word and deed; but from the very beginning, from May & June of 2002, there was tactic encouragement of the decentralized campaign, from the very center.

What Howard and I talked about was Joe Trippi, emails, blogs, and the internet.  I'd brought with me some photocopies of the webpages talking about the campaign, including the Howard Dean for President, 2004 page I'd created, which he took a copy of with. I had little expectations coming in, but whatever I expected, his receptivity and sense of intuitive understanding of the plan was more than strong enough for me to move forward with the effort. Afterwards, we all went down to the event for dinner and the speech.

Between meeting Governor Dean in Seattle, and December 2002, I didn't have much direct contact with a campaign. Things were still percolating, as the Governor was still Governor, and not able to take up fulltime running until his term completed, and having some sort of official campaign was still a ways from taking shape.  In retrospect, this was a major shortcoming of the campaign, and one from which a future netroots Presidential campaign might learn a lesson--Dean's official effort didn't start early enough. Part of the problem encountered in late 2003 for the Dean campaign was a direct result of the official campaign infrastructure being overwhelmed. The official campaign was nearly always two steps behind the demands placed on the campaign.  Not Dean himself, indeed, Howard would have been better off working the campaign trail one less day a week throughout 2003, and concentrating on the efforts of mastering the media, and preparing for the 30 day crunch leading up to the first elections. But in terms of utilizing the internet, if there's a Democratic campaign for the nomination in 2008, the campaign that's online with a netroots presence in January of 2006 is going to have a leg up on the competition.  

But throughout 2002, there was no such effort done by the campaign.  I would imagine that most visits by the Governor were arranged in a similar manner as the one in October that I'd help arrange through his longtime scheduler Sarah Buxton and Democratic officials, in Portland, Oregon. But for the most part, without any sort of overt campaign to interact with, I was busy with the political netroots community. By the late summer of 2002, MyDD had become the focal center on the internet for Dean's advocacy, and as the weblog grew in traffic over the summer leading up the coverage of the midterms, it also became the center of discussion in the blogosphere for chatter concerning those elections. At times, the task of serving as what was seemingly the organizational nexus of the Howard Dean campaign became overwhelming, with not even a campaign website to embrace before the Governor's term expired in January of 2003. I was looking for a solution to the e-mails that would say stuff like, "what's Howard Dean's schedule, update the calendar", "here's my phone number, call me so I can help", "can't you create a better official website?". And so on. Starting a separate blog seemed like a solution, but doing so alone seemed crazy, and likely to lead to even more work.  

By the Fall of 2002, Howard Dean's attractiveness had become obvious to every progressive paying attention.  He was against the war that every single one of the other potential candidates (Kerry, Edwards, Lieberman, Gephardt) had come out and voted in favor of happening. I had been attracted to Howard Dean because of his record as a Governor, and his plainspoken character. For many, his position to the invasion of Iraq crystallized that character.  Gore was still around, but for those looking for something new, refreshing, and unflinchingly Democratic, Howard Dean was the one, hands down.  At that moment, a group blog was created, and it was good enough for me. Aziz threw up a blogspot, the Howard Dean 2004 blog, Anna of Annatopia and myself joined as host writers, and on MyDD, I began linking and moving traffic to the Dean 2004 blog, which took over, at least in the sense of the closest to being official, the internet presence of Howard Dean's campaign.  

Then Joe Trippi's arrived on the scene, and all heaven and hell, the complete package, broke loose.  In early December of 2002, the political climate for the 2004 Democratic nomination shifted with the dropping out of Gore.  And I think that's probably, more than anything, what pulled Trippi into considering the possibility of managing the Dean campaign. Prior to Gore's dropping out, Dean's candidacy had all the earmarks of being similar to Bruce Babbitt's of 1992.  Gore had come out against the vote on invading Iraq, and was staking out a populist position even more progressive than his 2000 campaign. With Gore still in the race, there was only room for potentially one other alternative.  Similar to 1983, when Kennedy and Mondale were the presumptive challengers for the nomination, and Kennedy dropped out, Mondale became the de facto establishment candidate.  

In that 1984 primary, Trippi had worked on Mondale's campaign, and watched Hart's grassroots campaign unfold. When Gore dropped out, and the press attempted to anoint Kerry as the frontrunner, it failed to catch hold, leaving the question of who was the frontrunner wide open. In 1988, Trippi had signed on with Hart, in a campaign that faltered under Hart's affairs. In 1992, with Brown, Trippi had about as much success as one could expect with a 4th time running candidate that has no money. So, in 2002, with a full year ahead of Dean's candidacy, and without a frontrunner, Trippi noticed the things happening, and got on board.

It wasn't until the possibility of Trippi becoming involved in the official campaign that he actually engaged in the political blogosphere a a participant. Prior to that, Trippi lurked the progressive blogosphere. And it wasn't until later on, after we'd talked, that I learned he was no newcomer to online chat and the blogs. But anyway, during the latter part of 2002, after Trippi went with Dean to Iowa, and realized his potential as a candidate, Trippi began to comment on MyDD, and email, and I wasn't particularly sure of his arrival. My first response was literally, and simply "what do you want?", to his request to talk, and then I softened, because I really did want to talk with Joe Trippi; so I emailed back, "oh, that Joe Trippi, sure, give me a call..." Earlier, I'd blogged calling Trippi an idiot for not seeing the potential of Dean online in reaction to a quote of his (he was mis-quoted), and he wanted to talk and get my advice for Dean.

Like Trippi, I'd marveled at how Gary Hart had executed his primary campaign in 1984.  I was in school and watching, but ready to jump aboard Hart's 1988 campaign when Monkey Business happened, and it all abruptly ended. I myself was so despondent that I voted Libertarian for President in 1988, even while being a field director for Greenpeace, in Phoenix, AZ.  During the 1992 Democratic primary, while serving in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, I read the week or two old clips in awe of Jerry Brown's insurgent campaign, with which Trippi was involved, the genius 1-800 number, the perfect timing for the insurgent, and yet, once again ended short.

After recounting to me those histories, and his answering my queries of `why'd this happened' and so forth, I wondered to myself, why is Trippi calling up a blogger, and I knew, he saw this, the internet, as a key to winning. Trippi believed, and that was all I needed. We talked a lot about what it would mean for Howard Dean to have an internet-based campaign those months.  Once I learned that he was usually awake 20 out of 24 hours in the day, I would call him at all hours, through that December 2003 to January 2004 period, helping to lay the groundwork.  

I'd already written about how Howard Dean could use the net to not be another Babbitt, blogging, July 31st, 2002:

Howard Dean, you are no Bruce Babbitt... I hope. Seriously, Dean's in the exact same position in terms of the polls as where Babbitt was in 1988. The line-up is a bit different this time around, and Dean's a better candidate and speaker than is Babbitt, but in terms of ideas rather than endorsements, organization, or money, CNN is right on the money.

Here's what Dean could do to transform his weakness into his strength. Exploit the internet. His current website is sparse, not updated, and not very interesting. What he needs to develop is a website that gravitates the online discussion of 2004 toward him. A practical, user-friendly site, that sticks content to the user and sparks online debate. What I have in mind is a professional-looking campaign news-weblog that posts all the Dean and related press headlines with the ability for users to comment, with moderators in place to keep the discussion from being freeped.

Jerry Brown was nearly able to upset Bill Clinton through using a 1-800 number for fundraising and setting up a national grassroots organization. The money and organization is right here on the net for Dean to get, it's just a matter of him putting a few things in place to set it rolling in that direction. McCain pulled in millions overnight from online contributions after his NH win, Dean could bring in even more than McCain.

It all seemed possible now, because from the beginning of 2003 onward, Howard Dean's campaign was being run by Joe Trippi.  I know there were some logistics that he'd need to go through, Rick Ridder pissing off Kate O'Connor and leaving, but Trippi was already engaged.  What Trippi mostly wanted in January of 2003, was a plan on how the campaign could move forward with an internet strategy, and for that, I needed to branch beyond myself, which is when I asked Markos of Daily Kos if he was doing anything too consuming that he couldn't bother with helping design a strategy for the Howard Dean campaign. Over a weekend in Portland Oregon, we sketched out on a whiteboard in the Science building of PSU, and held a couple of conference calls with Joe Trippi, forming a strategic roadmap for the campaign.

If there's been one large factor of what happened on the internet to help propel Howard Dean's campaign, it's is the unofficial blog. Perhaps it's because, at the point of Dean's having an official blog, in June of 2003, the name was changed to Dean Nation, and everything that happened on the unofficial blog, for the past 8 or so months, seemed to disappear.  The unofficial blog didn't completely fall off the map after the launch of BFA, indeed, it went on to blaze yet another trail, with leading the effort of blograising for dollars, raising $40K for Howard Dean's campaign, but it's gone mostly unnoticed by those who have looked over the historical account of Dean's success with having the internet play a central role in his campaign.  And in terms of giving praise, or acknowledgement, it means little, but in terms of understanding why the Dean campaign hit the ground running with BFA, it's crucial.

What the unofficial blog did was give sense to the potential of having an official campaign blog.  I don't think, in terms of traffic, the blog ever went over 5000 visitors a day (MyDD.com maxed out at 20,000 daily visitors in 2002), but those who read it, contributed, and commented, were the same people as those who signed up for Meetup in January of 2003, contributed online with .01 to Howard Dean in March of 2003, and later joined the official campaign.  The unofficial blog centralized the evangelizing netroots in the spring leading up to the launch of BFA in June and the 2nd quarter-ending internet fundraising which shocked the political world. In fact, anyone associated with the official campaign in those early days read the unofficial blog.  Rick Ridder, then the campaign manager, would send me emails of Howard Dean's media appearances. Anyone who had any information of what was happening with Howard Dean, where he would be, would post in the comments.  Recaps and pictures would later appear in the blogs entries. In early 2003, Howard Dean one night posted in the comments from his Burlington home (he'd log onto the unofficial blog between campaign roadtrips), Joe Trippi and Zephyr Teachout would guest post, the campaign would submit answers to questions of the blog.  

This isn't to belittle the accomplishments of BlogForAmerica, but the path was blazed, and what happened on BFA from June 2003 on, had a precedent with the unofficial blog, which especially came into it's own in February of 2003, leading up to June of 2003.  The words unofficial were replaced by official, but in reality, what this meant, was that the campaign was officially embracing the decentralized concept of communicating with its base of supporters through the blog. The netroots worked so well, and Howard Dean & Joe Trippi were so open to it, that the blog expanded itself right into the campaign, officially being adopted. And not just in concept, but in terms of hiring as well.  

Two of the earliest arrivals to the campaign in Burlington VT were active participants of the blogospere, Joe Drymala and Matthew Gross.  JoeyDee, as he was known in the comments of MyDD, and DailyKos, had gotten so charged up, that he announced to all that he was buying a car, leaving his job in NYC as a playwriter, and moving to Burlington as a volunteer in Feb of 2003, then later on becoming the speechwriter for Howard Dean.  Matthew Gross commented frequently on the blogs about Howard Dean, and noticing that he wrote particularly well, in Feb of 2003, I invited him to guest post on MyDD.  He caught the blogger bug, and by early March was ready to go to make something happen.  He alerted me to his going to Burlington, and asked if I knew anyone there.  Yea, I do, I replied, JoeyDee is there, and Joe Trippi, who I'd been trying to get to start a blog for months. Showing up unannounced in Burlington, that's all Matt needed to prompt him to announce to Trippi that he blogged MyDD, and immediately getting hired to start a campaign blog, and later on becoming the campaign's director of internet communications.  But this is getting ahead of itself, and before we go on any further, back to the strategic roadmap sessions of Trippi with Markos and myself, in January of 2003.

One of our papers focused on blogs, and how they would "revolutionize" campaigning, and we wondered if it wasn't missing something, which Trippi keyed in on:

"You don't understand," said Joe.  "This campaign has no money.  Look, John Kerry has a list of 20,000 hardcore supporters, nationwide, OK?   Kerry's spent 15 years building that list, and he can turn to them and ask for support, and you know, they'll each mail him $20 dollars, you know what I'm saying?  They might not each give him a lot, but it's 20,000 supporters that nearly all will, you know, 20 bucks each, it adds up. Hello!  How are you guys going to get Howard Dean enough people to go head to head with John Kerry?  Can the net do this? That's what I want from you guys.  Look, I'm gonna make it real simple, this isn't rocket science, OK, just tell me how you're gonna get 20,000 people signed up to be the greatest grassroots campaign in modern history."  

I really didn't have the answer to that, yet.  But it only took a week to find it, or meetup with the answer.

William Finkel, of Meetup, had approached the John Edwards campaign with a solution.  They'd already 140 people across the nation sign up on their own with the campaign, with no official coordination or recommendation from the campaign itself, and William asked the Edwards officials, are you interested?  He didn't hear back from them, and the same went for the other campaigns. Then he found out somehow about the Howard Dean 2004 unofficial blog, and emailed Aziz with the same invitation, which Aziz forwarded to Anna and myself for an opinion. Yes, I replied, put it on the blog, let's see what happens. I was the 3rd person to sign up, probably after Aziz and William themselves, but it wasn't until a few days later, when I re-posted the Meetup information on MyDD one morning that it clicked.  The Meetup numbers went from about 20-30 to over 100 by noon. I remarked in the comments that it seemed pretty good, and got a snarkass reply that Dean still trailed Edwards by about 50. By the end of the day though, Dean had over 200 signup on Meetup from MyDD. William emailed thanks, and asked if I knew anyone in the campaign to start a dialogue with Meetup.  After a phone call, I was convinced that Meetup was legit, and tied in Trippi with the conversation. There were two things, Finkel and I thought, would create legitimacy for the effort, first having the Meetup logo put up on the campaign website, and second, for the campaign to send out a final letter of invitation to the individuals signed up before the first Wednesday of February Meetup.  

Trippi himself had to push those things through, all I could do was pester him everyday to make it happen, and I did, everyday, telling him it this was not only his 20,000, but I projected by January of 2004, it'd have 80,000 signed up. So, by the end of January, the Meetup logo hit the website, an official letter was written by Sue Allen for the attendee's from the Dean campaign, and Meetup began negotiations with DFA to partner the member information. After the Meetup, about a dozen nationwide occurred, I attended one in Portland, with seven others, included Chris Christopher (?), who was from Vermont, and later began blogging on the unofficial Dean blog. After the meetup, I posted a recap on the blog, word spread, and by end of the month, 3000 had signed up, and Howard Dean himself wrote the confirmation email sent out by Meetup, and that was all it took.  The Meetup numbers in Portland went from 7 to about 50, but it was in NYC, where DavidNYC and some others had taken to organizing an event where Howard Dean would show up, that Meetup took on a symbolic importance, and began escalating to its eventual peak of 160,000 a year later.

By the middle of February, the online campaign was rolling. During February and March of 2003, I was still in Oregon, wrapping up grad school and Markos had built out a blog for the campaign to use, if only someone at the campaign would coordinate it to occur.  We had by that time decided to partner up, and consult for campaigns, and Trippi was inclined to hire us in January, but for a couple of reasons, not being in authority and the fundraising push on his end, and myself still unable to move to the HQ's in Burlington, things never seemed to come to an agreement, but by this time, Howard Dean had become stoked full of momentum, and it was beyond the secret of the blogosphere, how big it had become, I didn't realize until the California Democratic convention in Sacramento, in the middle of March.  

After finding out the candidates would be in attendance, I remarked to Markos that we should attempt to get press credentials, why not, we had readerships of 20-30,000 at the time, more than most of the other press that would cover the event. So, we filled out the online applications, Markos began emailing with the staff of Bob Mulholland, and we wound up getting press credentials to the event. So, there I was, the Friday night, sitting with the press, and trying to listen to John Kerry speak, while the lighting was too dim, the sound system working at about ¼ it's capacity and thinking, I'll blog about chatting with the NYT's Adam Clymer and MSNBC's Tom Curry instead of Kerry's speech.

The next day, Saturday, it was the first golden moment. Howard Dean himself recounts the experience as primal in capturing the essence of what he'd tapped into. Karl Rove, no doubt watching the clip over and over with alien recognition, saw it as 20 seconds of showing clips of the crazy man named Howard Dean. For those of us in the audience, it was a long time coming.

It seemed as if I'd been whooshed up out of my body, I'd lost all sense of impartiality among the press suits, and stood up and yelled with the crowd. It was rapture. It was, in taking down the fundamental preachers, an evangelical take back of America.  It was nearly a religious-like fervor that Howard Dean had tapped into; one whose strain winds it's way throughout American history, re-emerging at times of turmoil.

I have no doubt, that 20 years from now, it will be this speech that remains etched in the history of political memory. In many ways, it was the precursor to the Iowa concession speech that doomed Dean's candidacy.  It was not made-for-TV speaking.  Too hot, to real, and way to visceral to watch detached on the tube.  I look at photos from the event and it brings to mind a man's jawbone ripping off flesh from a fresh kill. Authentic raw meat for the partisan Democrats, I'd never experienced anything like it before. After the speech, we all looked around for confirmation that it was the same for others in the room.  Markos and I met Karl Frish, who was the webmaster for the CA Dem party, and found the same reaction.  I remarked at the time, if you had not seen a national poll showing HD at less than 5% in the polls, and judged your frontrunner ranking based upon the delegate reaction, that far and away, Howard Dean was the frontrunner.  And we knew then, it was only a matter of time for the rest of the nation to follow.

The weekend was sweet, and bitter. Trippi was to arrive and meet with Markos and I in person.  Instead, he'd backed out at the last moment, which seemed to us at the time, the last of too many missed opportunities.  Sitting on the sidelines and watching the campaigns unfold wasn't an option for us, somehow, we were going to work a Presidential campaign. After Dean's speech, we met briefly with Howard Dean, then with David Binder, and Kelly McMahon, but it fell short.  There was a strange sense of having achievement, but at the same time, being out in the cold; of being about to watch the parade go by, and so, the next events didn't come as much of a surprise, as we just had a feeling of there being no way to be denied.

I don't think there's much of a debate where Wesley Clark's netroots movement began. It was on DailyKos. At somepoint early in 2003, Markos began writing positive reviews of the General's appearance on CNN, and his commentary concerning the war.  And even though we'd just been transfixed at the CA Dem convention, we were not yet working on a Presidential campaign.  Trippi was getting harder to get a hold of, Mathew Gross had  moved from blogging on MyDD to building a blog for the campaign, Dean's campaign was taking off without us yet on board. So, with some time on our hands, being bloggers, we used it to, well, start another presidential campaign.

Clark, from the beginning, was a paper-strong candidate. In fact, we didn't even have the positions at first. After a few initial entries on DailyKos, Markos made similar to the inroads with Joe Trippi that I made early on with the Dean campaign through MyDD, beginning with Wesley Clark Jr, who connected him to Mark Nichols, Clark's longtime aide.  From Nichols, we gained insight into the positions that Clark held. He was pro-choice, we were assured, with a progressive outlook; Wes Jr. was fond of telling Markos that Al Sharpton was his father's favorite candidate, rhetoric-wise. That, I found hard to believe, Clark & Sharpton?  By late March, 2003, given the minimal assurances that a candidacy was a 50-50 proposition, I was inclined to go along with the effort to Draft Clark, or at least help lauch the effort.

So, by the first week in April, Markos endorsed Wes Clark candidacy on DailyKos, and we launched DraftClark.com, but we were not alone in the effort. On the very same day, John Hlinko lauched DraftWesleyClark.com. Our relationship with them was cordial from the beginning.  If there was going to be a Clark candidacy, we'd need all the help we could get, was our feeling.  The Draft Clark effort gained momentum throughout the month of April, and by mid-May, we were told, a decision would be made. At the same time, Trippi began e-mailing and calling to re-connect.  Though still open to working with the Dean campaign, we began to see the larger picture at this time, of the prospects of utilizing the internet in campaigns beyond Dean or Clark.

Later that month, we flew out to Burlington for Howard Dean's Finance meeting held in Stowe VT, to finally meet with Trippi and officially join the campaign. We stayed up late into the first night out in front of Trapp lodge. Markos, Joe and myself talking into the night about what would happen. Zephyr Teachout had just come on board with the internet team, and she joined in. Even then, Joe's big question to me was along the lines of, "never in the history of presidential politics has the insurgent candidate become the frontrunner before the first caucuses or primary dates." It was never really a question, but a problem he saw coming that he did't think was answered. I said, "he'd have to become the frontrunner," but obviously, this would entail a problematic candidacy-- shifting the fundamental sense of the campaign. The basic gist here is that, even back in May of 2003, we could sense that Howard Dean was going to peak to early, and even though Joe tried, there seemed nothing he could do to alter it from happening.

A lot of the talk at Finance meetings doesn't in fact revolve around money, but instead, information by those managing the campaign, which in turn, is later put to use in raising the money. And, not surprisingly, it's Trippi's powerpoint presentation that sticks out in my mind, and from which I took notes.

Now, there's a particular point of 20-20 hindsight to deal with it, involving winning or not winning Iowa.  Dean speaks now that "we all knew" that whoever won Iowa would win it all, but that wasn't the POV shared by everyone, particularly before November, 2003. In May through Fall, the scenario was of having Gephardt win Iowa, and Dean win in New Hampshire. We knew that John Kerry was the strongest competitor, and so 'why not rely on Gephardt knocking him out' went the thinking that spring of '03.

If the speech by Dean in front of the DNC and following it up with the CA Democratic Convention in March were Dean's coming out, the summer, and in particular, the Sleepless Summer Tour, was the full blossom of the netroots/grassroots DFA campaign. The fondest memory I have from those blissful summer months at the HQ's were arriving one morning at the office on a Friday and walking in with Kathy Lash while Trippi was on the cell learning that Howard Dean was going to be on the cover of Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report. All in the same week. "It doesn't get any better than this", said Kathy, and her smile showed it, even Joe couldn't hold back a smile that day, we were all smiles that July weekend; that golden campaign moment stretched on.

Inside the HQ's, Matt and Zephyr had moved beyond the blogspot Call to Action blog, launching our BlogForAmerica in the middle of June. May was a busy month for the campaign.  Zepyhr had started working with the internet campaign in late March, blogging with Matt on the campaign's blogspot website. Nicco had attended the NYC Meetup in March, and decided to join the campaign, coming on in April.  Matt wanted to base the campaign blog on the layout of DailyKos, using the MT platform and blogroll style of a grassroots blog; meanwhile, Zepyhr discovered Rusty Foster's Kuro5hin.org website, which used Scoop to allow the community to promote the content.

Throughout the Summer of '03 and into the Fall, we grew, but by the end of September, we hit a wall. I often nowadays remark that we just exhausted the available universe of potential supporters. At the end of the campaign, in January of '04, when we were all sitting around trying to figure out what went wrong, we pointed to the equivalency of television in the early 1950's, for the available impact of the internet in 2003. In September, the campaign grew exponentially, and Clark was getting into the race, throwing us off stride. A last ditch effort was made to facilitate a meeting between Clark and Dean. The Dean campaign did a focus group out in California seeing how folks would react to a Doctor and General democratic ticket-- they loved it. Clark though, played us along the entire time-- maybe he was just doing counter-intelligence on Howard, I dunno. For Dean's campaign in late September, initially, the decision was made to redeploy 1/3rd of the national staff to Iowa to combat Clark there. Unfortunately, then Clark dropped out, and yet the Dean campaign didn't readjust our Iowa plan, because by that time very favorable Iowa polling had come out, but just in case-- we had a back-up plan. The decision has already been made to flood the fundraising zone, squeezing out the other contenders by drying up their fundraising. The plan would have worked too, had Kerry not dumped $5 million of his own funds into his Iowa operation.

As for the Iowa meltdown, that's another 6000 words in itself. I've eluded above to the fact that we didn't originally see Iowa in play. I think a few things put it into play, like Dean being thin-skinned to Gephardt's attacks, faulty polling that showed us blowing the field away, and an adoption of the frontrunner status by Howard Dean. Crappy ads by Steve McMahon, Dean's Iowa staffs decision to not let the DFA internet team play in Iowa, and Dean's inability to lower his presence and adjust to voters that tuned in the last two weeks, all that didn't help.

In the end, that we came so darn close to pulling it off was a miracle. I went out to Iowa as a scout a week before the caucus, starting in Dubuque. I told Trippi on Saturday in Davenport that I thought we'd still win, but was pretty disturbed by the amount of caucus-insiders that were signed up with Kerry. That was one flag. The events of monday morning showed two others. First, the news of Kucinich having emailed all of his supporters in Iowa, telling them to back John Edwards. Second, the overnight polling showed Gephardt dropping below 15% in many precincts, with his supporters second choices being either Edwards or Kerry. I blogged with Zephyr a bit at the last few Joan Jett concert, in Ames on Tuesday afternoon, and played and chatted with a glum Trippi-- and Paul Blank looked a bit like a ghost. Back in Des Moines, the entrance polls showed Dean at around 22-24, and Kerry at around 26-28, with Edwards in the middle, and we only faded from there as the night progressed.

The campaign, and the movement that came out of it, laid the groundwork for what's happened now. But as for the campaign, it was a hell of a ride. Dean's bloggers and webteam, under Joe Trippi's wide-open guidance, flourished. But, Howard Dean, through happen-stance with the media's attack, didn't have the right stuff to close the deal in 2004. The era's breakthrough & revolutionary campaign ended, Trippi's webteam disbanded, forming different internet consulting groups, but the netroots has kept growing.