Voices at the Crash Site

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What went wrong in the Howard Dean campaign, which looked like a winner until voters showed up at the primaries? Maybe Dean was never really ahead, says Clay Shirky. A senior Dean campaign aide agrees: "Even though we looked like an 800-pound gorilla, we were still growing up. We were like the big lanky teenager that looked like a grown man." And why did the media think otherwise? According to Jay Rosen, "the way campaign coverage was organized helped inflate and sustain a news bubble. ... The press bubble was blown around the figure, 'front runner in Iowa and New Hampshire,' a narrative device activated by Dean's poll numbers and bank account."