Blogger Storm

The Dean Campaign has about 3,500 people on the ground in Iowa, and the Gephardt people about 1,000. But in terms of body mass, it’s more even then the ratio suggests. Most of the Dean Supporters are young people, male and female, with an average stature of Dennis Kucinich. Most of Gephardt’s people are labor guys, mostly Teamsters, I understand, with the average stature of an NFL lineman.

Consider the political import of that difference: the total mass of Dean vs. Gephardt canvassers is probably equivalent!

I’m amazed that the media has not picked up on this vital statistic as yet another example of Dean’s diminished lead. After all, their job is to bring out the important, subtle issues that we mortals might not perceive. And they do this as consummate professionals, subject only to preemption by more important issues, like Michael Jackson walking from a limo to a court room.

But the Dean canvassers outweigh the Teamsters in another metric: they include a lot of bloggers, and they’re documenting the canvassing experience so heavily that there’s a site set up to point to their posts. BloggerStorm (referring to Joe Trippi’s “Perfect Storm” Iowa campaign) offers some pretty good insights that are more biased, but more nuanced than the press, of course. Even the Deaniacs are suffering from ad fatigue (from Seth-Tech):

Campaign Overload

You know there are too many campaign commercials on TV here in Iowa when I start complaining. As someone with an interest in political science, and 18 hours of coursework to back it up, I’d consider my tolerance to be higher than the average Iowan, but last night was relentless. I’d say that at least 50% of the ads were political last night, all Dean, Kerry, Gephardt, and Edwards. At least it will all be over soon…

Speaking of media fatigue, the Michael Jackson event seems to be enough to cause Doc to flee Santa Barbara for Burlington’s -40 wind chill.

The Doc is In

I’m picking up the SearlsDude at the Burlington Airport at 11:35 tonight. He says that he hasn’t been in really cold weather in 2 or 3 decades. I’ve been disingenuous about a critical fact I should not have withheld: There are no jetways here. He gets to walk from the plane to the terminal in whatever golf jacket he’s wearing.

I’ve been urging Doc to visit Dean HQ since the weather was clement. He’ll interview Harish Ro, Tony Lyon, Tom Limoncelli and Jascha Franklin-Hodge to learn about the campaign’s abundant use of Linux and open source, and probably act as Team Cluetrain’s Inspector General to see if we’re as clued as we seem to be.

It’ll also be fun to hang with him up here in the midst of this ferment of smart young people.

1:02:23 PM