Great frontpage post from the weekend: The Real Value of Kerry's Endorsement of Obama

[beachmom]

DailyKos now do a nice series on the weekend of longer more reflective posts. I am sure this one from DHinMI will please many people here:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/13/15349/5824

What the Pundits Missed: The Real Value of Kerry's Endorsement of Obama

A few days ago, during the weekly news roundup on NPR's Diane Rehm Show, Rehm asked her guests what they thought of John Kerry's endorsement of Barack Obama. The panelists—Tony Blankly, David Corn and John Harwood—were a fairly sharp bunch (even though Blankly is a rightwing tool). Their assessment? Didn't mean much. Kerry was old news. Sure, he had a fundraising list to give Obama, but everyone knows who those donors are, and Obama would already have reached out to them.

Man, did they miss the point.

Sure, most of the big donors are known to the fundraising experts Obama has on staff, and to the regional fundraisers on Obama's finance committee. But what they don't necessarily have, and what the Kerry "list" may provide is the detailed contact information that makes a cold call far more effective, or helps people figure out how best to appeal to the prospective donors. The Kerry database—if he makes it fully available to Obama—is a treasure that even the Clinton machine would envy. Kerry raised more money in direct donations than Bill Clinton ever did, so the number of contacts is huge. But with that data will come invaluable background: policy interests of the donors, their business background, the name of their spouse and their personal assistants/gatekeepers, where they spend their summers, who they did fundraisers with in the past, cell phone numbers, direct personal emails addresses and all kinds of other information.

But lets get past that. Those are details that make a fundraiser or campaign operative salivate, but we'll forgive the journalists for not understanding the micro-mechanics. But what they really missed is related to a much bigger trend in American political campaigns in recent years, especially on the Democratic side: the rise of the internet and the growing importance of small donors.

Really great wonky type post on the ins and outs of the internet and how donations work. But it amounts to a kudos to what Kerry created back in 2004. The comments descend into ugliness, much to the annoyance of DHinMI, but it's definitely worth a read.

[Noisy Democrat]

1. It pleased many of us up to a point

There was a problem with it, though -- it assumes that JK will hand over his mailing list and let the Obama people dig through it. A lot of people were upset by that. The reality is that JK has let Obama send out a mailing to his mailing list, which is a different thing. I wish DHinMI had gotten that fact straight; it would've avoided a lot of the rancor that came up in the comments.

Still, it's very cool that a front-page post acknowledged that JK built something special and unprecedented in 2004.

[MarjorieG]

2. I would have preferred value of his person, not just data

Media, people, who still resent Kerry for not having saved us from another four years (however much they seem to know it was still stolen in thousands of ways), will never give him any credit for anything. His opinion, articulated as well as has been, is a value to many, and should be noted. Even once.

[beachmom]

3. Actually, I think it's good as an acknowledgement that Kerry did do

many things right in '04, like this kind of organization. The meme is that he ran an incompetent campaign. Well, this example shows that wasn't right.

Perhaps a staffer can explain what can be shared and what can't. It's not just the e-mail list; it's other stuff.

Since I don't know, I can't defend him on this issue.

Staffers?

[karynnj]

5. I agree and he did a brilliant job keeping it going after losing.

It would be hard to win an argument that his campaign was well run. However, an analysis of where the problems came from would be interesting. Kerry's primary campaign was exceptionally good, winning almost all the states easily without increasing interparty rancor. The intern smear was handled as gracefully and as professionally as any attack. Not only did it become obvious that there was nothing there, the woman involved was treated with respect by everyone in the campaign. The SBVT were beaten back twice.

It was when the people from other campaigns came in that all the stories seeped out criticizing the campaign - most with Bill Clinton's fingerprints. You also had Clinton people pushing the ABB message, that is normal for primaries, not general election. (Though now, I can absolve my self for voting for WJC, I was ABB. I just didn't know it.) Not to mention, extrapolating from Edwards' comment where he prided himself for not using the campaign's slogan, it's clear that at a point where everyone should have ceded leadership to Kerry, he had two ego maniacs to deal with - while trying to unseat a President in time of war. I'm not sure anyone else could have managed the campaign better. Not to mention no one could have bettered Kerry in debates and interviews. (just compare Clinton and Kerry this Sunday)

[karynnj]

4. Not to mention

that if they had shown a tenth of the excitement, inspiration and positivity that Kerry showed every single day, rather than pout and pretentiously whine that he was not Dean, new found progressive liberal that took over the boby of VT's former moderate Democratic Governor, or the "charming" Clinton (who couldn't hold a candle to Kerry), he might be President.

That unfortunately could well be a problem this year as well - and I blame Edwards and Clinton more than Obama. Edwards is lower profile , but he might have been the worst with his overt sound bites that HRC is corrupt or without a conscience. That is borderline in a anonymous blog post and very far out of line for the candidate himself - it's worse than anything he said in 2004 about Bush. Just as many of us here have not really gotten over how the Clintons and Edwards treated Kerry. I assume that these attacks, which are nastier than the 2004 ones, will lead to more bad feelings than there were in 2004.