2004 campaign swag from Iowa Perfect Storm canvassing and Washington State Democratic caucus organizing.
A friend shared this retrospective on the the Dean Scream, and asked me if it was like I remembered. More or less. I was living in Washington State then, and I went to Iowa to knock on doors and drive turnout to the caucus. The night of the caucus, we stood on street corners waving Dean signs, heating packs hopefully stuffed in our gloves and boots.
When the caucuses were done, we caught whatever ride we could to the hotel to hear the results and crowded up to stand in the front.
We were all wearing winter boots, and stomping our feet. We were all screaming and shouting and chanting and clapping. A couple of guys in union shirts standing in front of me when the speech started had a bullhorn. I could barely make out the words of his speech when it started, because the crowd only settled down a little. If I hadn’t heard his stump speech already, I would have understood even less.
It was only afterwards that someone who'd been listening to the radio said everyone was talking about "the scream." We were like, "What scream?" The track of his speech from the news didn't sound like what we heard, that portion hadn't even particularly stood out. Howard Dean’s stump speech always had a states roll call in it.
The people I ended up getting a ride with by the next evening, we drove all night, then took a break at their family's place in Massachusetts to get cleaned up before showing up to canvas at the nearest campaign HQ in New Hampshire. That narrative about the scream was all over the place by then, but we were very out of touch with the media coverage and none of us even had cell phones. We canvassed, went to Dean events in the evenings, and then crashed. But it was over. My ticket home though, I had bought in advance to leave from NH the day after the primary, so I was in it for the duration.
Another thing stood out from that trip. There’s been a sea change in acceptance of marriage equality in the years since, but Dean was radical at the time for supporting civil unions. He was the only candidate running who had any position that differed from the Defense of Marriage Act. I remember he mentioned his support for civil unions in a speech at an auditorium in NH, one where people had been standing up to cheer his applause lines. He got standing ovations, over and over, with most of the crowd standing up.
At the time, I had been convinced that civil unions were an insulting distraction on the path to full marriage equality, though I wouldn't have put it like that at the time.
So when he said that he had taken the lead on civil unions, I didn’t stand up. Which meant I had a good view of the fact that only about half as many people stood for that as had for the last applause line. There was a distinct cooling off in the room as that very warm crowd got a little grumbly, even. Dean even made mention of the room's reaction, saying something like, 'oh, not as popular here.' He was taken aback.
I was ashamed, because I could see that my not standing because I wanted him to go farther didn't seem any different from the people who had clearly not stood because they thought he had gone too far. It shook me up. No one else in that room could tell the difference between my no and theirs, and it mattered more than any internal script of my rationale.
Marriage equality wasn’t on the table in the 2004 election. It wasn’t an option in the presidential primary; except that if you supported Howard Dean, you could support civil unions.
Marriage equality wasn’t on the table in that auditorium; you could support Dean’s civil union compromise or you stood with the opposition even to that.
Back in Washington State, I worked with the King County Democratic Party to drive turnout to the caucuses. I was briefly a precinct captain, I canvassed, I went to some fairly interminable meetings. I remember arguing with Kucinich supporters that Dean was so much more electable than Kucinich, which, maybe, but I think the only thing any of us convinced each other of was that some of us didn’t want to be on speaking terms anymore.
At the Washington State caucus, I gave a speech for Dean, and I got sent to the next stage of the delegate nominations. I didn’t make it to the next round. As a friend said, at some point everyone’s just going to vote for the most popular person there, the one who knows the most people, because you all just want to go home.
I was disappointed when Dean closed his campaign. I went to the announcement in Seattle that ended up being the beginning of Democracy for America. Howard Dean was going to pick up and go on, and he asked all of us to please join him in carrying on the work we’d started with the campaign.
I went to the Democratic National Convention that year anyway though, having been credentialed as a blogger. I heard Obama give a convention speech that had a lot of people there in the hall wondering when he was going to run for president. We didn’t have to wait too long, as it happened.
Come November, I still didn’t like Kerry’s voting record on foreign policy, including the Iraq war. Though he was at least a man who knew that the way we had gone to war, the way it had been handled, was a colossal mistake. There wasn’t some viable third option on the ballot. It was Kerry or Bush; one of those guys was going to be president, like it or not.
Turnout was huge that year, but it went against us. As everyone knows. And all through Bush’s second term, I’d occasionally remember that I’d once been sure I’d never vote for John Kerry. I was glad I did though. I was glad to have stood against the disastrous second term of George W. Bush.
