I noticed today that the Obama campaign, alone among Republican or Democratic candidates, has created an Obama application for Facebook: “The Obama application puts the most recent campaign video and news on your profile and in front of your friends. It also enables you to easily communicate with your friends in early primary states where support for Barack is especially important.”
The tool just underlines how completely the Obama campaign has pulverized its rivals on the web, and the the intensity of support for this candidate among young Democrats.
Hmm. Dominance on the web. Legions of passionate young supporters. Establishment Democratic Party insider also running. Is this 2004 all over again? The parallel has been noted by many others. Alex Beam offered his cynical? realistic? assessment last month (yes, he says, Obama equals Dean, and will share his fate). Alternet, as one might expect, was more optimistic in February in, “Howard Dean 2.0: Obama Engages Youth on the Web,” part of the initial rush of stories on the Obama-web subject.
We all know Santayana’s famous saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The question is, how good a student of history is Obama. Personally, I think he has a better shot at the Presidency than Dean, primarily because his policies on the issues are more centrist, and because Illinois, his base, is much bigger than Vermont. What do you think?
Sure, Dean was vocally anti-Iraq war, but other than that position (which Obama shares now as he did then), Dean wasn’t exactly beating down the door for far-lefty positions, was he? His actual record in VT was pretty moderate, IIRC.
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A bigger base in IL certainly helps Obama, though it has the unfortunate side-effect of causing Obama to back stupid energy policies that will only make things worse.
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But what Obama has, which Dean lacked, is genuine charisma. Dean had it too, in a way, but it was rooted more in anger than in optimism, which IMHO is more limiting. So no, Obama is not exactly the new Howard Dean — which is not to say he won’t suffer more or less the same fate!
Just one example. Compare this review of Obama’s position on trade issues from the Council on Foreign Relations, with these comments on trade by Dean in 2004.
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I agree that Dean wasn’t a far-lefty, despite the attempts of his rivals to portray him as such, but I do think Obama is less-lefty than Dean.
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On the other hand, I’m always willing to listen to opposing views so if someone wants to correct me, fire away.
Honestly, I don’t see that much difference between them.
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Dean:
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Obama:
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I’d call those at best modest differences of degree; certainly not differences of kind.
I’m not sure how a 2 year Senator and and a 4 year lieutenant governor/12 year governor can have “not much difference between them.” I know you’re talking policy but when you actually compare the two…
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[ Dean http://www.politics1… ]: State Representative, 1983-87; Lieutenant Governor, 1987-91Howard Dean – 1990 (elected in 1986, re-elected in 1988, 1990); Governor, 1991-2003 (elected in 1992, re-elected in 1994, 1996, 1998 & 2000); Chair, National Governors Association, 1994-95; Chair, Democratic Governors Association, 1997.
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[ Obama http://www.politics1… ]: Illinois State Senator, 1997-2005 (elected 1996, 1998, 2002). Candidate for Congress, 2000. US Senator, 2005 – present (elected 2004).
which was the example given in the previous comment.
I don’t think Dean lacks for charisma, and I don’t think it’s an “angry,” charisma. He’s much more rough around the edges, for sure. I think it’s a different sort of charisma. Dean always has struck me as somebody I can connect with as a real person. Obama is sort of on a pedestal way “up there,” if that makes any sense. He’s more inaccessible, not in that he doesn’t answer questions, but only in that the crowds he generates are huge, and so it’s harder to get a better sense of the real person.
Obama won’t answer questions.
The parallels are superficial, the differences are immense.
That’s the sort of thing I’d have written a post about, in the past, but I don’t feel so “free” to do so with the new pro-trolling policies of the past few months. My threshold of motivation for posting is much much higher now.
which I disagree with in a few ways but you could argue that they’re attracting some of the same types of supporters..
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Hillary is a much, much better candidate than Kerry. Plus, you have Edwards who seems to be surprisingly popular with a lot of obama’s type of people for god knows what reason (I like the guy but no qualifications).
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That tool is pretty smart though.
Depends partly by what you mean “the same types of supporters” – you could be referring to the same people who supported Howard Dean, or you could be referring to the sort of people who’ve been uninvolved until now and would be drawn into the process by Dean if he were running this year. Either way, though, I don’t see any one candidate drawing most of either block. On the first set of people, it definitely looks like Edwards has got more of them (2003-2004 Deanies) than any other candidate, but there are significant numbers supporting Obama or organizing “Draft Gore” groups, etc. – and a lot, like me, still undecided.
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I don’t see any candidate being the Dean-style pull for the same sort of new people as Dean was, either. Obama’s getting support from a lot of formerly uninvolved people, sure, but for very different reasons than Dean (he’s a media superstar, he’s black, he’s a consensus-forming bridge-builder, etc.), and he talks about different things, which means he’s getting different people (with some overlap).
The campaign managers are probably more similar than the two men themselves. I think, issues wise, Hillary and Obama are actually very similar.
Obama will have considerable advantages regarding Facebook specifically as long as Chris Hughes (one of FB’s founders)is working for him:
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So while the application is an example of how web-savvy Obama’s camp is, there’s certainly an inherent leg-up in this case.
Just throwing that out there.
I think there is some superficial similarity. They both give an impassioned speech. Both campaigns enjoy a sense of energy and mission to them, but that’s about it.
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Dean was completely bottom up. People did things on their own and told the campaign. It was an insurgent campaign that really stumbled when there was nothing to surge against because they were at the top.
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Obama is top down. He’s got money advisors and big-name endorsements. As seen with the MySpace episode, they can’t stand having someone else control their message.
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I agree that on websites and in offices, you get the same “feeling” but that’s the only similarity I see. Dean’s approach has suffused throughout the party, and I see plenty of young energy backing Hillary, and a good smear elsewhere, too. Obama isn’t Dean, and neither is his campaign…which in the end may be a good thing for Obama.
Remember “New Coke” they marketed the hell out of it with promotions, packaging and special prices.
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Once people tasted it it was not accepted.
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Once people get a taste of Obama and a good look he will be rejected.
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All sizzle…no steak.
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The Dems have a good opportunity to capture The White House if they nominate a candidate that will play in middle America.
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Gore or Kerry did not play hence we have Bush X2.
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Let’s make this a fight won on the convention floor not some slick ad man’s campaign or prostituted to the special interests.
Very rarely am I driven to reply to a post here, but this one is so utterly wrong that I feel like it deserves a response.
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The fact that the Obama campaign understands the power of the web means they aren’t idiots and that they live in the 21st century, not that the candidate is just like Howard Dean. And to try to make some point that because Obama’s campaign uses the web well, or that he’s running against an insider, that he’s therefore going to make an ass of himself and flame out is even more wrong.
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Look no further than Obama’s speech at Hampton a couple days ago — http://www.barackoba… — to understand how utterly and completely different he is than Dean ever was or could be. They’re just not comparable, as you finally point out at the bottom of your ditty with regard to their policies; but they’re even more disparate in message and demeanor. Dean was about an attack on policies and on the Republican administration; Obama is about (whether you agree with the strategy or not) looking toward solutions and conciliation.
“Dean was about an attack on policies and on the Republican administration.”
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Is someone getting their political history from the Weekly Standard again? Sure, Dean was the only one with the cojones to attack Bush while the current field was busy nodding their heads in Congress or focusing on dumpster placement in the neighborhood. Sure, Dean had a habit of saying things like “I don’t want to listen to the fundamentalist preachers anymore…I want my country back.” Maybe talking about the environment was an attack on Republicans. It was an attack to talk about the rights of gay Americans. Maybe demanding the truth on Iraq was an attack.
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Dean’s best known ideas are centered on “you have the power”, as in “you have the power to make right just as important as might…you have the power to give Americans a reason to vote again” That’s not solutions and conciliation. That is not the grey miasma of compromise for its own sake — it’s idealism of the purest kind. And it’s miles better than kowtowing before another group of ministers to polish one’s GodPass.
The difference is experience:
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[ Dean http://www.politics1… ]: State Representative, 1983-87; Lieutenant Governor, 1987-91Howard Dean – 1990 (elected in 1986, re-elected in 1988, 1990); Governor, 1991-2003 (elected in 1992, re-elected in 1994, 1996, 1998 & 2000); Chair, National Governors Association, 1994-95; Chair, Democratic Governors Association, 1997.
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[ Obama http://www.politics1… ]: Illinois State Senator, 1997-2005 (elected 1996, 1998, 2002). Candidate for Congress, 2000. US Senator, 2005 – present (elected 2004).
Do you think that Obama will survive the Clinton machine? Just how far do you anticipate the Clinton machine to go to torpedo the Obama candidacy? When it gets down to crunch time, it will become pretty ugly.
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More importantly, experince means a lot. Richardson is the only democrat candidate who displays any semblance of experience that will give the electorate cause to vote for him.
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USA needs experience, insight, and foresight. We’ve had to endure eght years of an empty suit. Enough already.
The numbers seem rather frozen, with HRC close to 40% and BO with 25%. A lot of people seem to think there’s more fluidity, but I just don’t see it. And most of the supporters of these two make the other of the two their second choice.
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I think Obama is the perfect candidate for 2012, after the Bush mess has been cleaned up sufficiently to actually do substantial things. At that point conditions will be right for an unscarred, center-Left person of inspiring power.
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For all the critiques, I’m with HRC this time around. The next Presidential term is going to be a massive cleanup operation which people are not going to enjoy very much. HRC is, I think, willing to expend herself on it and able to do what it demands. Which will include going deep into the muck to purge the federal government of the kommisars and apparatchiks and corruption and stupidity and unConstitutional ethos engrained by almost 40 years of Republican dominance. Obama’s talent and potential lies in higher, cleaner things.