Yesterday's Dean 2004 Meetup was convened in Exeter. Since it covered several area towns (Exeter, Newmarket, Durham, Hampton Falls, Kensington, Dover inter alia) there was a good crowd of at least twenty people.
All in all, I would say that opinions and feelings were representative of what you'd find on BlogforAmerica.com There were the NBD's and the ABB's. For the time being there's a general agreement to stick with the program, work for Dean, and start thinking about expanding the effort to local races.
The Democratic party on the local level seems, at best, to be disorganized. Exeter's has only one "official"--no treasurer, secretary, etc. Naturally, there's no one to take over all the good data accumulated about voters in the primary. So, that's an immediate task. Phone numbers and email addresses need to be stored on our computers so we can all keep in touch.
There was a thank you letter read from the Dean seacoast staff who have now moved on to Maine. Also, for those interested, contact persons in Maine that are co-ordinating visibility this coming weekend. Everyone seemed to agree that working on the Dean campaign had given them valuable knowledge about the process that they are eager to pass on.
Not surprising, everyone also expressed a sense of having forged a new community which they have no intention of giving up.
The sudden rise of John Kerry remains somewhat unexplained. In Kensington, for example, all 121 identified Dean supporters voted, but they didn't vote as expected. In addition, there were about 20% more voters than expected and nobody was quite sure where they came from. That Kerry and Edwards had been providing "support" (computers, etc) to local candidate efforts long before this year had somehow slipped under the radar. Actually, that's not surprising since most of those present were political neophites-- regular voters but not involved in running election efforts.
Although those who were registered as Independents were able to vote in either party primary, Republicans were not allowed to change their party on the spot, as they seemed to have been led to expect. While some Republicans actually wrote Dean in on their Republican ballots, others seemed to be following another program--one intended to promote the candidate least likely to give GWB a problem in November.
It will be interesting to see at what point, now that the connection between Republican operatives and Sharpton has been revealed, the connection between Kerry's fundraiser and the RNC receives more intense media scrutiny. Whether the "Fourth Estate" is going to make a proper effort to expose the truth is still an open question.
Everybody at the Exeter Meetup agreed that the future of the nation is at stake in this presidential election; that it can't survive another four years of the current administration.
Posted by Hannah at February 5, 2004 04:14 AM