Time Magazine

:time:

Howard's End?

Dean and Trippi started a new style of campaigning. Will the movement outlast the candidate?

... Yet it was Trippi, a veteran political strategist who had previously worked on a number of losing presidential campaigns, who came up with many of the ideas that gave the Dean campaign its pizazz, back before everyone else copied them: blogs, house parties and Meetups, as well as a Web tool called Get Local that allows people to set up campaign events in their communities. All of that helped give Democrats from all over the country the power to elevate from obscurity the former Governor of tiny Vermont. Political operatives from everywhere traveled to Burlington, Vt., to hear the good news from the frumpy, loquacious Trippi himself. ...

... Even if the Dean faithful are forced to disperse, one thing is clear for now: they couldn't elect him just on their own. Only about 600,000 people have signed up at the campaign's website. Even if all of them were active in the campaign, they would constitute a support base about the size of the population of Vermont. In the meantime, the political establishment has no intention of letting Dean supporters drift away. Representatives from the Democratic National Committee (D.N.C.) have visited the Dean campaign to hear its ideas and on their own have started blogs, Meetups and special drives to solicit small donations. "They're already on top of it, and that's the first time I've seen the D.N.C. on top of anything for a while," says Donna Brazile, Gore's former campaign manager. Political consultants as far away as West Africa have contacted Dean's Web team. The office of the Prime Minister of Canada has called twice. Trippi may have left Dean's campaign, but his ideas have already been stolen, which guarantees them a life in this campaign cycle—and probably guarantees him a few lucrative consulting deals. ...

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101040209/nmovement.html