Sneaking into the Flying Circus by Alexandra Pelosi

Author:Alexandra Pelosi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2005-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

George McGovern trying to catch a cab.

I See Dean People

Loveland, Iowa

NOVEMBER 15, 2003

HOWARD DEAN STARTED OUT by taking on the Democratic Party. Now he thinks he can go toe-to-toe with the president of the United States? Where does he get this kind of confidence? The secret to Dean’s self-assurance is money. The reason the media are paying attention to him is because he has the most money and he knows how to raise more! He has earned respect by showing Washington that he is a cash cow.

When you have the dough, you can start turning political functions into pure theater. Like at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner in Des Moines, a night intended for the Iowa Democrats, when Dean showed the prowess of his grassroots organization by paying to bus in loads of screaming kids from all across the country who yelled their lungs out all night long. This is not your grandpa’s C-SPAN. As all the other candidates walked in waving when they were introduced, Dean appeared on the balcony, in a sea of his supporters, who were expressing at earsplitting decibels how much they worship their idol. You usually don’t see this kind of lavish rock star staging until the general election.

Regardless of who the guests at the dinner came to support, everyone was polite enough to clap along with bits and pieces of all the candidates’ speeches. Except for the Deanies. While the other candidates spoke, they sat on their hands and talked among themselves. (This is their MO. If you go to a convention hoping to hear all of the candidates, forget it. It is common to hear the Dean supporters chanting in the hallway when the other candidates are on stage speaking.) When Dean took to the stage, his adoring mob hooted and hollered. By the time he reached the crescendo of his speech, they were in a frenzy. The doctor pointed his finger in the air and hollered “You have the power” fourteen times, like he was casting a spell on his followers. Kool-Aid alert! “Are they all brainwashed?” the man standing in front of me asked his friends. “This is like Nuremberg.”

Near the Dean cheering section a huge, hand-painted banner along the wall said I SEE DEAN PEOPLE a takeoff from the movie The Sixth Sense, in which the people were dead but did not know it. One of the Deanies who painted the sign explained its significance: “All the Democrats in this room are all Dean people, but they do not know it yet.” A Kerry aide had his own interpretation of how ironic the sign was: “The Dean people think that we are all dead. What they don’t realize is that they are the dead ones.”

A Dean staffer walked up to a Kerry staffer and said, “Dean is going to kick your ass.” Later that night, at the Kerry after-party, that same Deanie was walking around announcing, “I am recruiting. After tonight I’m sure I can find defectors.” Another Deanie announced, “Soon all of these people will all be working for Dean.

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