i-sako.com

I plugged into the enthusiasm of the Dean campaign early on. I sent a campaign contribution to Dean in June of last year, my first ever. That contribution was followed by a few others, all to Dean. Although I found the other candidates competitive, none of them were managing their campaigns in quite the same way. None of them were as supporter-driven as Dean for America. 

Now it’s beginning to look like the money might have been wasted. Dean’s campaign is reportedly running out of money (which is kind of astonishing when you consider how much he had to begin with). Staffers are being asked to forego pay for two weeks while the campaign rebounds. Dean is not planning to run ads in seven of the states with upcoming primaries. 

Is this the end the road for Dean? It’s probably too early to say, but I think the smart money at this stage lies in making contributions to the Democratic party instead of to individual candidates.

Ironically, I think Dean’s efforts to get voters to the polls worked, just not for him. Regardless of what ultimately happens to the Dean campaign, it will be one that others will no doubt seek to imitate. Dean may not win the nomination, but he has already managed to provoke the party into fighting back against the Bush administration, something it seemed very disinclined to do in the 2002 mid-term elections. In that sense, I think those contributions might have been worthwhile after all, because Dean’s ability to raise money focused the whole party’s attention on something it had previously overlooked, the fact that Bush is wrong—and that it’s okay to say so in public.