Joe Trippi is a tool

And not a really useful thing like a wrench, but something like a garden weasel or pocketfisherman that is hawked late at night to world weary insomniacs with ready cash and eager hopes. I just lost the little respect I'd had for Trippi. Before I thought he was the relentlessly self promoting hero of every one of his stories.

I saw Trippi in Boston over Thanksgiving. He gave a talk where he pulled a muscle patting Republicans on the back, and tried very hard to explain how terrible Kerry was. After the primary Trippi could be counted on to tell anyone in earshot how bad Dean was, and how poorly things went. It felt a little like someone trying to polish their resume while badmouthing their employer. It's a hard trick to pull off. Then there was this article.

"Dean had really never run for anything before in his life," Trippi explained. "The first contested race of his life was for president, and he was making rookie mistakes."
Secondly, "nobody with a brain would work for us," he said.

Dean ran for governor 5 times. Maybe what Trippi means is that because Vermont is small...it doesn't count as an election. (Which is a fairly poor GOTV approach).

Vermont's population is 608,827. Dick Gephardt's district has 621,690 people. I guess those 13,000+ voters are the difference between really having an election and just pretending. Even stranger: Howard Dean received 148,059 votes in his last race, and Dick Gephardt received 122,181. Each of their opponents polled at 38% of the vote. Apparently Dick Gephardt also ran a pretend race.

Leonard Boswell the lone Democrat in Iowa represents 585,305 citizens. Clearly he never faced real race. It's nice that Trippi would say as much.

Trippi loves playing the "they're so much better, we're stupid" game. He loves talking about how we have no clue, and are worthless. It's an annoying counter to his relentless proclamation of his own role in creating the next "revolution." It does amaze me, Trippi proclaims Dean and the rest of DFA a revolution, etc. Then after the revolution sputters and is stalled for a bit, he tells anyone who will listen how silly some of us were ("nobody with a brain would work for us") and that he knew all along we would fail.

Those are the qualities I look for in a real leader

UPDATE:

Apparently Trippi was quoted out of context. He emailed someone a copy of his remarks and they read as follows:

All the people who just wanted to be with the winner wouldn't give usthe time of day -- all the pro's wanted to work for John Kerry, ofEdwards or Gephardt someone all the experts thought had a chance --back then no one with a brain wanted to move to Burlington, Vermontand work for a guy with an astersik next to his name.

I guess that's better. Apparently it's not that we were all morons, rather none of us was good enough to be with the winner. Truth be told, I joined the campaign in part out of a recognition that I could carve a role for myself there. So at least in that regard his point feels fitting (to my situation). But.... I seem to remember a whole lot of professional operatives mucking about Dean HQ in the last month or two of the campaign. So to say that we lacked for pro's is kind of innacurate. And while I liked the elephants (as they were nicknamed) their arrival does coincide with our defeat (not their fault, just saying). Trippi then goes on to offer this painful metaphor, in which three teams are playing baseball. It's very confusing.

The miracle was not that the Boston Red Sox came back in the bottom ofthe 9th to beat the little Vermont Bad News Bears. The miracle wasthat the little Vermont Bad News Bears somehow snuck past security goton to the playing field and wailed past the St. Louis Cardinals andthe Boston Red Sox -- took a lead into the bottom of the ninth andtaught the rest of the league how to play better."