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
Sitting on his campaign plane a few weeks before he was due to accept the Democratic nomination for president, John Kerry looked back at Iowa. "There was a media perception that our campaign was written off," he said. "People had all but handed the nomination to Howard Dean. [So] we had to win Iowa or come in a very strong second." Very early on, in January of 2003, things were going well for Kerry. Then, the ground shifted, and Howard Dean shifted it. "What we couldn't control was the war in Iraq," Kerry said. "Basically, I was moving very effectively and very well until the war in Iraq stopped the debate and changed the dynamic. It just didn't matter what you were doing and what you said; there was just one angry topic. Dean didn't have to vote on the war, and he moved in and created a different dynamic." Nothing could change Kerry's vote supporting the invasion of Iraq, and all he could do was slog on and try to explain it.
In the end, Kerry actually won the antiwar vote in Iowa. Among those voters strongly opposed to the war, according to exit polls, Kerry got 34 percent to Dean's 29 percent. Among young voters ages 17-29, who many analysts thought would go for Dean, Kerry got 35 percent to Dean's 25 percent. Even among those who used the Internet "a great deal" to learn about the candidates, Kerry got 31 percent to Dean's 25 percent. "I had an inner confidence," Kerry said. "I could see people shifting; I could see things the media couldn't. I was pretty confident, one foot in front of the other, steady as you go." He felt he had a good staff in Iowa and a good staff in Washington and, most of all, nobody concealed bad news from him. "If it doesn't look good, my people know to say, 'We've got a problem,' " Kerry said. "And we had a few of those conversations early on. 'What do we do? How do we fix it?' " And, of course, he had a fixer, the magical Mr. Whouley. "He's very skilled, incredibly disciplined, and capable," Kerry said, and then grew almost rhapsodic, an emotional state he does not often visit. "He works quietly behind the scenes like the wizard of Oz behind the curtain. He is the magical Mr. Mistoffelees! He can organize. He is calm and steady and knows where you are, and he knows how to count. And it is good to have people around who know how to count." No kidding. Just ask Howard Dean.
"In the beginning," Tom Ochs said, "we had no plan for success, and in the end we had no plan for defeat."
"Howard Dean never believed in the movement," Joe Trippi said. "Never. And I was never managing the thing. Never. Howard Dean was his own manager."
"I don't think there was a single category of voters where Dean beat us in Iowa," Michael Whouley said. "Maybe the people who said they were with Dean every week for nine months, who didn't show up at the caucuses; he beat us in that category."
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