I'll channel Stoller here for a minute, but my post yesterday about what Howard Dean was up to in early 2003 was meant to have two implications. First, that it's incredibly earlier for this much coverage of the Democratic primary. Back in May of 2003 there was no sense that the primary campaigns were unfolding. The narrative of the campaigns did not dominate television news and political coverage generally. And it's only February.
Second, it's sort of weird that no one seems to have learned the lesson that there is a way to tap into the world of small donors and create a campaign that way. This isn't limited to presidential campaigns either, frankly.
I'm not saying that people can just abandon those tasty $2300 checks, just that they can reduce reliance on them and the time it takes to collect them if they get creative about reaching out to the masses. I've been to a couple big ticket elite fundraisers, and they're really kind of awful. A lot of rich people have a major sense of entitlement, and tend think they're geniuses, so candidates really have to pander to them.
Anyway, it just seems like there's an initiative failure here.
