There's a long, proud tradition of really negative campaigning in the final hours before a primary--anonymous flyers attacking the other candidates, that sort of thing. My sense is that every campaign does it (including my preferred candidate and Handsome Larry*, who's (accurately) perceived to have run the most positive campaign.) Every campaign is "shocked" at their rivals' dirty tricks and indignantly denies its own--until they're caught, in which case it's portrayed, truly or falsely, as a one-time mistake by an overzealous volunteer.
But there's negative campaigning, and there's negative campaigning. These had better be isolated incidents.
1. From an AP story:
For example, Carson said, an e-mail that proposes to be from campaign manager Joe Trippi asks for interns, but then says because of tight sleeping headquarters, homosexuals are not accepted.Frances Gehling, a Dean volunteer, said she received a phone call January 16 from a person who identified herself as a Londonderry, N.H., resident who worked for the local Kerry campaign. After Gehling said she supported Dean, the caller asked if it bothered Gehling "that Dean waffles on the issues."
The caller then asked Gehling about Dean's statement that "we will learn how to talk about Jesus" when he campaigns in the South. "She asked how someone who is married to a Jew and raising Jewish children can have Christian values," Gehring said when contacted by The Associated Press.
2. There have been reports that people were calling voters in the middle of the night--4.a.m., say--in New Hampshire pretending to be from the Dean campaign. Atrios summarizes them here.
3. There were rumors on Kos of attacks on Dean's wife and other, even nastier push polls (would it change your opinion on Dean to know that he was an abortitionist, his history of spousal abuse, etc.) in Iowa, and a recording of a Kerry volunteer calling Dean an "environmental racist." I didn't take these very seriously at the time, but these reports have a cumulative effect.
If these reports are true (and I think most are, except maybe the rumors about the abortionist/spousal abuse push polls, which are not well sourced and so ridiculously sleazy that I find them hard to believe), and if they are an organized effort rather than a few wacko volunteers (which is much less clear) we still don't know who's responsible. It could be any Democratic candidate, or even a Republican trying to sow discord. My knee jerk reaction and that of many Dean supporters, though, was "it's probably the Kerry campaign." I'm sure that's partly sour grapes, but it's also partly Occam's razor. Most of the stories that are confirmed involve the Kerry campaign; Kerry participated in both Iowa and NH; and he was the one most likely to gain if Dean was damaged.
In any case, it needs to stop.
*Daily Show reference, naturally.
How can there be dirty campaigning here? There are no Republicans involved! :)
Seriously, I know this will never happen, but I wish you had to identify what campaign you were calling from. Of course then we would just see 'independent groups' doing it. (sigh)
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | January 28, 2004 at 04:25 PM
Via Andrew Sullivan, John Ellis makes the case why Kerry is the prime suspect.
Posted by: Fredrik Nyman | January 28, 2004 at 05:18 PM
Fredrik Nyman wrote:
No, he does not. There is nothing in the Ellis article referring to any sort of dirty tricks by Kerry, Dean, or anyone else. In fact, Ellis argues that Dean (much like Clark and Lieberman) are essentially finished and that Kerry needs to focus his attention in the upcoming primaries against Edwards.
Posted by: Thorley Winston | January 28, 2004 at 06:27 PM
Of course, if we do not make the assumption that the (unverified) rumors are true, then some or many of them could just be stories started by members of the Dean campaign or Dean supporters in the hopes of garnering sympathy for their candidate and to make palatable (to his supporters or potential supporters) excuses for his incredibly poor showing in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Dean after all does have a history of using rumors and innuendo to smear his opponents as he did with the infamous “interesting theory” bit on NPR where he smeared the Bush administration over 9/11 under the guise of merely recounting the latest moon-bat theory that “Bush knew.”
Dean has nothing to lose by portraying himself to be the underdog in this race while Kerry has more incentive to make himself appear as “presidential” as possible. Strategically it would make just as much, if not more, sense for Dean to go for sympathy as it would for the front runner to waste time smearing someone who already imploded a while ago when his real target (per the Ellis article) ought to be Edwards. In which case it seems more plausible to save such tactics for taking out Edwards than Dean.
Besides which, since when is being an abortionist a liability in the Democratic primary? I could understand the concern if Dean did something sacrilegious like vetoing a bill to provide taxpayer funding for late term abortions for underage girls without their parent or a guardian’s notification but there seems to be no evidence that actually performing the procedure himself would make Dean anything less than a hero amongst the Democratic party faithful.
Posted by: Thorley Winston | January 28, 2004 at 06:29 PM
Katerine,
Dean fired Joe Trippi? Blog woman, blog!
Thanks.
Posted by: Macallan | January 28, 2004 at 06:42 PM
I don't really have much to say. I don't know what Trippi is actually like, or Neel. He obviously did a great job until, say, September or October but he faltered after that. They neglected their message--both as far as policy substance and media strategy. They didn't have good ads, either. But Trippi did a lot of good, and a shakeup at this point is a huge risk. I'm hoping Neel was partly behind the strategy post-Iowa and they chose him on that basis, not just because he was the nearest convenient bigwig. I don't like the Gore advisers at all as rule, but he seems like a governing adviser and not a campaign adviser; it was the campaign folks who were truly awful.
They need a "no guts no glory" strategy as far as I'm concerned--but that does not mean bomb-throwing. It means reminding people why they admired Dean so much in the first place, and make them unwilling to settle for Kerry until forced to. A combination of passion an substance.
Needless to say I am full of ideas about what this would entail, but I'm not exactly highly placed in the Dean organization. The speech last night was an excellent start from where I sat.
Posted by: Katherine | January 28, 2004 at 06:54 PM
"...For example, Carson said, an e-mail that proposes to be from...."
I've never had an e-mail propose to me. Damn, that's good writing!
Posted by: Gary Farber | January 28, 2004 at 07:07 PM
One more thing I don't get: why Neel and not Steve Grossman? He's been with the campaign forever and used to be chair of the DNC. He's a thoroughly decent guy who I'd think "gets" the campaign better than any newbie Gore advisor.
Everyone seems to be scratching their heads at choosing Neel....maybe it's a sign that he's actually done something good we don't know about?
Incorrigibly hopeful about the Dean campaign? Who, me?
Posted by: Katherine | January 28, 2004 at 07:13 PM
As a practical matter, it might be good to have a candidate with a real mastery of dirty tricks to take on Bush. Personally, though, I hope that whoever is doing this is exposed and ruined.
Posted by: marky | January 28, 2004 at 08:01 PM
Thorley,
The way I read the article, Ellis described a "shoot the wounded" strategy, which proved successful in the 1988 R primary. Here, the wounded are everyone-but-Kerry, and in Ellis' words, Kerry is a cold fish and coldly calculating as well.
Strategically it makes sense for Kerry to use this strategy. Done right, he will inflict a crippling injury which will make it even harder for Dean to come back.
Posted by: Fredrik Nyman | January 28, 2004 at 10:50 PM
Fredrik Nyman wrote:
Perhaps, however that’s a far cry from your original claim that Ellis “makes the case why Kerry is the prime suspect.” Besides which the competition is now between Kerry and Edwards or maybe Clark since Dean’s support has revealed itself to be pretty thin and pretty much limited to the ideological fringe of his party. He could not even win Iowa with the support of that State’s Senator or his own neighboring State.
Do not get me wrong, I agree that Kerry is a sleazy and calculating SOB(1) but calling someone up in the middle of the night to accuse an opponent of beating his wife (can you get more clichéd than that?) or accusing him of being an abortionist (a badge of honor in Democratic circles) is simply not the sort of thing that is going to sway votes in the Democratic primary. Both Kerry and Dean know that. Which is why this sounds more like a case of Dean supporters making up a story of dirty tricks in order to anger Democratic voters to get them to rally around their guy.
TW
(1) We are talking about a guy here who staged the throwing of service medals over the White House gate but had the presence of mind to make sure that they were someone else’s medals so he could retain his for the time when being a Vietnam veteran was a political asset rather than a liability. That with his being on both sides of Operation: Desert Storm, voting to gut the CIA’s funding before UN weapons inspectors were kicked out of Iraq while complaining later about intelligence failures in Iraq, and his waffling on Operation: Iraqi Freedom denotes a person who is more prone to crass political calculations in making his moves rather than someone who utilizes such brutish and obvious tactics.
Posted by: Thorley Winston | January 30, 2004 at 12:53 PM