"Picking Up Where Dean Left Off"

NY Times:

Hungry for dinner with Senator Barack Obama? A minimum contribution of $5 to his presidential campaign – and, of course, a little dash of luck – was all it took to play along in the latest political gimmick of the 2008 race for the White House.

Eyeing ways to expand and energize the ranks of its supporters, the campaign invited people to write a few words explaining why they wanted to meet Mr. Obama. Thousands of responses came in, aides said, and four winners were selected this week to join the senator for a private dinner in July.

Sound like something Howard Dean might have tried four years ago?

The Obama campaign, along with several of his rivals, is hoping to pick up where Mr. Dean's presidential bid left off – at least where political creativity is concerned – by seizing on the power of the Internet to raise money, stir excitement and mobilize supporters across the country.

They are mindful, Mr. Obama said, of the pitfalls and the possibilities.

"One of the lessons, obviously for us, is making sure that the grassroots enthusiasm translates into votes," Mr. Obama said. "And that's something obviously that we're going to be paying a lot of attention to."

At this moment in the 2004 presidential race, the early hints of Mr. Dean's rise were first being detected. His strong anti-war sentiment was appealing to Democratic activists in Iowa, New Hampshire and across the country. And through low-cost fundraising on the Internet, his contributions in the second quarter of 2003 nearly tripled from the first.

No one can forget, of course, that Mr. Dean ultimately failed to win any state except Vermont, his home, and the race for the White House moved along without him.

Indeed, there are perhaps more distinctions than similarities in the style, message and overall candidacies of Mr. Obama and Mr. Dean. (A significant difference already obvious to voters is the presence of the senator's wife, Michelle Obama. Four years ago, Judy Dean only emerged in Iowa in the final days of the campaign as it began to struggle.)

Yet in a brief interview this week, Mr. Obama readily agreed that his campaign certainly could glean a lesson or two from Mr. Dean's high-flying summer four years ago.

"Howard Dean tapped powerfully into the surge of the anti-Iraq sentiment and, I think, did a brilliant job of that," Mr. Obama said. "Our message is a little broader than that and what's bringing people out is a little broader than that: The desire to solve not just Iraq, but also get moving on domestic policy.

"But I think that there is overlap in the emphasis on grassroots, the emphasis on getting people, particularly young people involved in the campaign," he said. "We learned a lot from their campaign, in both using the Internet and combining it with grassroots and on-the-ground organizing."

Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., an Illinois Democrat, endorsed Mr. Dean's candidacy four years ago and is now supporting Mr. Obama. The nuts-and-bolts preparations of the campaigns, he said, are vastly different and in the Obama campaign he sees "a perfect fusion between grassroots activity and older methods."

"This is a long courtship with the American people," Mr. Jackson said, "not a quick date."

Since opening his presidential campaign five months ago, Mr. Obama has drawn crowds far larger than most of his rivals. (Mr. Dean did, too.) But what good is a 20,000-person February rally in Austin, for example, when the campaign begins far from Texas?

"If you're a campaign with lots of enthusiasm, you have to make sure that you are capturing everyone's information," said David Plouffe, Mr. Obama's campaign manager. "We are very mindful of that every time we do an event."

But Mr. Plouffe warns against dismissing the political significance of such crowds, particularly in this presidential cycle, where a frenzied day of coast-to-coast primaries on Feb. 5 will make candidates rely on a large base of supporters everywhere. "It has real meaningful application on Feb. 5," he said, "beginning with the ability to chase absentee ballots."

But since the race is scheduled to open with the Iowa caucuses, tentatively set for Jan. 14, the Obama campaign is focusing considerable attention on the state. Mr. Plouffe said the campaign is tracking the Internet usage of Democrats and has found that a smaller share of the voters in Iowa are actively engaged on the Web than in New Hampshire, so the campaign is factoring that into its organizing efforts.

"You have to have a homegrown organization," he said, "town by town."

That said, the campaign is still working to build the excitement for voters who will take their turn later. On the Obama campaign web site is a bold-faced declaration: "Dinner For Five: Meet Barack's Dinner Guests."

One of those guests is Haile Rivera, 30, who lives in the Bronx. In a telephone interview, he said he has been impressed with Mr. Obama since he delivered the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He contributed $25 to the campaign and signed up for dinner after receiving an e-mail from the campaign.

"I was attracted to Obama by his charisma," he said. So does he follow the campaign's activity on the Web site? Almost never, he said, adding: "I'm not one of those diehards."

Howie P.S.: There is still time to RSVP for Howard Dean's visit to Seattle, June 26. They just added a $25 Student rate.