Joe Trippi
Sunday, March 14
Displaying the inclusive optimism that earned him the rapturous love of hundreds of thousands of Deaniacs, the man who built the Howard Dean campaign (who would probably call himself the man who put the tools in place that allowed people to build the Howard Dean campaign) declared Sunday that the Internet had proven its ability to overthrow the “rusted, corrupted, busted broadcast politics that ill-serves the American people and American democracy.
“The Internet is the single-most powerful tool placed in the hands of ordinary Americans, in terms of providing access to information, and a way to network and take collective action,” said Dean’s former campaign manager Joe Trippi. “Americans are just beginning to realize its possibilities.”
It isn’t just big-money TV politics that stymie outsider candidates, Trippi said, but also a primary calendar and convention rules designed specifically to ensure the nomination of a “Washington insider.” Nevertheless, by encouraging people to use online tools to connect virtually and in person, the Dean campaign grew from 432 supporters in January 2003 to 600,000 a year later, and raised more money than any Democrat in history, virtually all of it in small contributions. Even though Dean lost, Trippi said, those figures show a sea change in American politics, which has long been infected with apathy and disinterest.
“Every day, there’s another American waking up, saying, ‘I can make a difference,'” he said.
Trippi explained that thinking you can make a difference only comes from seeing all the other people who are ready to make a difference along with you – and that’s something only the interactive, real-time medium of the Internet can do. He used as an example Dean’s small-contribution fundraising blitzes, which fueled themselves as the rising contribution totals convinced people that their 25 bucks – insignificant in the world of big-money politics – would go toward a pile of cash with the power to do something. But even if the tangible outcome was wads of money, Trippi said, it was that belief that change was possible that mattered the most.
In other words, he said, the genie was out of the bottle – and not just in politics, and not just Dean’s campaign, but all across industry, news, and social networks.
“This wasn’t a dot-com crash,” Trippi said, referring to the flip metaphor some have used to dismiss Dean’s failed campaign. “It was a dot-com miracle.”
This article appears in March 19 • 2004.