Huffpost Homepage
The Blog


Zack Exley Headshot


Posted: Updated:

I couldn't resist asking Trippi why Edwards' Poverty Tour lasted just three days when Howard Dean's Sleepless Summer Tour lasted much longer. He got a little feisty...

UPDATE: OK, I looked it up -- and (technically) Joe is completely correct and I am (technically) completely full of it in this exchange. Sleepless Summer in fact lasted four days. And so I apologize--to myself--for looking like an idiot in this little interview. But my larger point stands: the whole Dean campaign was a non-stop tour about changing politics--and changing America. I was there in the Dean office when the idea for Sleepless Summer was hatched. It was Joe's idea--and it was huge. It was the campaign manager saying, "We're going to go out and do something amazing." Not: "Let's do a ___ tour, maybe it'll be a good story."

And so what if the cities were picked for being big fundraising cities. So what--it was a tour for the people with some high dollar fundraising thrown in. What are the candidates doing now? High dollar fundraising with hardly anything else for the people (unless you live in IA or NH) thrown in.

The point is that I didn't even know Edwards started a poverty tour until it was over. The point is that during Sleepless Summer the whole Democratic base was forwarding around pictures of the crowds at the rallies (not pictures of Dean).

The point is that the base already thought Sleepless Summer was happening before anyone gave it a name. And they never knew it ended, because the whole campaign was Sleepless--and Summer lasted long into December.

The point is that all the candidates right now in 2007 are ignoring their bases, except in gimmicks and well (or poorly) choreographed stunts designed by comms people. The point is that it's fake.

The point is right now that if just one of the tier two candidates stepped up and stopped being politicians, then they truly could break through. Richardson? Biden? Dodd? Come on guys.