The morning of the South Carolina primary I receive an anxious email from our local Dean Coordinator about Wednesday’s Meet -up in Woodstock. "This is our most important meet-up ever," it reads, "Deans’ strategy is to fight in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Washington (once Kerry’s frontrunner status is bruised) and then take New York and California where he has always been strong. This means we have to GET Out The Vote for Dean. " For a short memo, it says a lot about the disarray in Democratic ranks.

First, there’s the astonishing decision by the Dean campaign to concede the super primary on February 3rd - which is spread across seven states with some 290 national delegates in play - to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. The Dean campaign is not running any campaign advertising in these states, and the local Dean organizations are not receiving additional resources for their efforts to get out the vote. These are the signs of a campaign that’s been put on life support. Second, the silence on the decision to pass on the South Carolina and Missouri primaries reflects a broader strategic choice. These primaries are crucial road tests for the viability of a Democratic Candidacy in the Southland and very important to the future of Senator John Edward’s campaign. But they may not be central to the Democrats national campaign next fall.

By his choice of Northern battlegrounds, Dean is joining party strategists such as Kevin Phillips and Ruy Teixiera, who are advising the Democrats to "Forget Dixie." There is a growing consensus among Democrats that the South is a lost cause and that they must concentrate on a Northern strategy In the Fall that would aim at eking out a narrow majority in the electoral college made up of the solid "Blue states" from the two coasts and contested states from the Middle and South West. The fall campaign then would shape up as a face-off between the Two Americas, with each party aiming at maximizing turnouts in their core regions, Dixieland for the Republicans and the "Cosmopolitan Coasts" for the Democrats.

Equally importantly for now, is the stubborn determination of the Deaniacs to fight on despite the hammering they absorbed last month. The Dean Campaign for America crashed at the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire and in process burned through some 32 million $ of the 41 million $ in on-line donations that Dean had raised since last summer. Placing third in Iowa behind John Kerry and John Edwards and second in New Hampshire with only 25 % of the vote came as a shock to Dean loyalists. But the real kick in the pants was the firing of Joe Trippi, the Guru of online organizing, and his replacement by Gore’s former Chief of Staff, Roy Neel. Neel was K-Street lobbyist who as the head of the US Telecom Association, lead the effort to lobby Congress for legislation favourable the corporate media, and collected some 3.5 million $ in corporate donations between 1999 and 2000. His appointment creates a conflict between Dean’s message and his chief messenger. It will be difficult for Dean to continue railing against the evils of crony capitalism with Roy Neel standing at his side. But Neel is supposed to bring the kind of central oversight and media connections that will prevent a repetition of the kind of rout that the Deaniacs have experienced twice on their home ground.

Dean was shot down by a media campaign that successfully "reframed" our progressive centrist from Vermont as this years’ crazy "angry man," but the Dean campaign’s is not the only casualty. The Corporate Media has been working hard to thin the Democratic field. The past two weeks have seen the withdrawal of former Senator Carole Mosely Brown and Congressman Richard Gephardt, while deathwatch will begin for Joe Liberman and Wesley Clark if neither of them wins at least one state No doubt, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton will stay in the race but never climb out of the single digits.

The Deaniacs soldier on not only to save their candidate, but also their movement of some 600,000 activists. This movement has been Dean’s greatest strength and his fatal weakness. In its reliance on the Internet, his campaign has tended to cater to its internal audience rather than speak to the general electorate that relies on the mass media. And now even though Dean is failing at the polls, his movement is refusing to let go. As does Dr. Dean himself, even if it means he has to throw many of his movement’s principles overboard.

In the coming month, Dean will probably fail to get enough Democratic delegates to keep his candidacy alive until this July’s convention, but not before he has fought on long enough to damage John Kerry’s chances of winning in the general election next November. In the end John Kerry will emerge as the safe candidate of the Democratic Party establishment - bringing us full circle to where we started out last spring. But the media has already begun to shift its focus on "reframing" Kerry, the War hero, as the Massachusetts’s Liberal who was Michael Dukakis’ Lieutenant Governor, - that is, as a respectable and honourable man who will lose gracefully to George Bush in the fall.

John Mason Woodstock, New York January 30th, 2004