Turning Point
After nearly everyone had written him off, John Kerry turned a limping campaign into a force that couldn't be beat. Here's How
In mid-November, thanks to the considerable sales efforts of Trippi, Dean obtained the endorsement of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). It was a huge boost to his campaign. AFSCME has 1.4 million members and SEIU 1.6 million. The unions were racially diverse (which Dean badly needed) and could provide thousands of trained campaign volunteers. The endorsement not only showed that Dean could get support beyond the Internet but that he could be the candidate of labor, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic establishment. It should have been an occasion for rejoicing in Burlington. Instead, it was a near disaster.
The Deaniacs were upset, and through their blogs they let Dean know it. To them, big labor was no different from big business. They were all part of the same old Establishment. "They thought it was a sellout," Ford said. While Dean needed labor's support, he could hardly afford to alienate the Internet troops who were funding his campaign. Besides, Dean and Trippi were both committed to empowerment, to letting people see how they could exercise power they never realized they possessed. The Deaniacs were the very essence of the Dean campaign, and nobody on the campaign wanted to mess with them. So, Trippi and Ford--who were supposed to be making the most important day-to-day decisions on the campaign from headquarters--were forced to go on a secret mission to meet with the Dean supporters and calm their fears.
Ford went to Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and a few cities he can't remember. Trippi took the rest of the country. The meetings, arranged through the Internet, attracted thousands of Deaniacs. "They were very candid and direct and sometimes difficult," Ford said. "But at the end, I felt we were all on the same page." Though his presence was a sign of how seriously the Dean campaign took the complaints, Ford delivered a message of realpolitik. "We made clear to them that their value was immense and unprecedented, but there were 600,000 of them and that we were going to need 54 million votes to win the presidential election in November," Ford said. "So we needed the support of those unions." Things finally settled down. But the "People's Revolt" would have far-reaching consequences for the campaign.
Even before the caucuses, some Dean staffers felt his empowerment message had grown old and thought he should try to grow the campaign beyond the Internet legions by going back to his core issues of healthcare and balanced budgets. Gina Glantz, who had been Bill Bradley's national campaign manager and was now on the Dean plane every day to act as the "adult" the candidate would listen to (it didn't work), said, "The campaign was enamored of the 'you have the power' message, but it got stale and Dean kept speaking to the same people instead of expanding. 'You have the power' does not put food on the table. He had terrific issues and terrific answers, but he didn't give them. He just kept riding the movement wave." But Trippi and Ford remembered how badly the Deaniacs had reacted to the union endorsements. They weren't willing to risk another revolt. "It was obvious by the end," Glantz said, "that Dean needed to expand his message, but he listened to Joe and Mike Ford, and they encouraged him to stay on the message that got him there."
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