So he may be cooked after all. Like many others, I had expected Dean to remain viable for at least a while by virtue of the simple fact that he’d raised way more money than any of the other Democratic candidates. What I didn’t know was that he’s spent it all. Out of some $40 million raised, the campaign reportedly now has between $3 million and $5 million left – and a corresponding amount in bills. As a result, he won’t be airing ads in the seven states that have primaries or caucuses next Tuesday.
Instead, he’s husbanding what few bucks he can for caucuses Saturday, Feb. 7, in Washington state and Michigan and a week later in Wisconsin.
"We're going to have to win eventually," Dean said today while campaigning in Michigan. "But the question was do we have to win on February 3. Of course we want to, but we don't have to."
So he’s basically conceding next week’s seven states to candidates who do have money for ads – primarily John Kerry and Wesley Clark and, to a lesser extent, John Edwards. The result is likely to be ugly for Dean – who hopes nonetheless to remain in the race by picking up delegates through some second- and third-place finishes.
Meanwhile, Democratic fund raisers have told Dean that second-place finishes aren’t good enough. More bad news, since second place is probably the best he can hope for next Tuesday.
Dean fired his campaign manager, Joe Trippi, who organized the Internet fund-raising effort that raised Dean from obscurity to, for a time, front-runner for the nomination, and replaced him with a former aide to Al Gore, Roy Neel.
All this may open the door for Kerry to solidify his front-runner status and move fairly quickly from there to enough strength to win the nomination.
Working the long-standing assumption that President Bush would rather run against Dean than any other Democrat, the satirical site Scrappleface has some fun by annointing Bush’s top adviser, Karl Rove, as new head of the Dean campaign.
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