Former Dean campaign manager turns analyst

[UpInArms]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/7866852.htm

LOS ANGELES - Joe Trippi shifted from Democratic presidential campaign manager to campaign analyst Tuesday.

Trippi, who resigned as Howard Dean's campaign chief last week, joined a panel of political experts and moderator Chris Matthews on MSNBC to chew over the results of Tuesday's seven primaries and caucuses.

...more...

huh?

[pacifictiger]

1. well, it will be interesting to

see what he really is all about.

[fishnfla]

2. $7 million richer

his PR firm took in 7 mill. from the campaign. Heard a great line today: all the smart guys are in polling, all the rich guys are in media

[UpInArms]

3. hmmmmm

http://www.getcatapult.com/team.html


edited to add:

Sadly, the parallels are inescapable. Dean burned through a hefty $9.2M in advertising, but still finished lamely in Iowa and New Hampshire, prompting a re-evaluation of a campaign fueled largely by devoted but neophyte supporters. (Anybody remember boo.com?) So Dean turned to veteran political operative Ray Neel, a former lobbyist and Al Gore aide, causing even the Governor's faithful to wonder if the campaign was selling out to the Washington insiders it has spent months ridiculing.

http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/cat_politics_government.html

[jansu]

6. I would look into that $9.2M, how it was spent!

If Trippi recieved $7M seems to me he made his money and then he "moveon" to the dark side. Looks like he did the job he was paid for, and is now getting his reward. urrrrrr!

[fishnfla]

9. My limited understanding

note: VERY limited. It is not unusual for a campaign to spend that kind of money on media. It is unusual in this case, that the camp. manager is part of the PR company.

I was never a Dean supporter, but I feel bad for what happened to the folks that are.

[hedda_foil]

10. Sorry, but there's a misperception here.

The money that Trippi's firm took in paid for the ad buys for the campaign. That's how agencies work. The agency bills the client. The agency pays the media for the ad placements. His company's take for a great deal of work (placing, tracking to make sure all ads are played as booked, bookkeeping, billing, office and staff expense for the above) was under 15% of the total billing of which an absolute maximum of 5% was profit before taxes. Trippi's share of that in a 3-partner firm is 1/3 of the 5% after taxes. He was not paid as campaign manager at all.

Sorry, but Trippi's take is tiny, and it gets mixed in with the agency's entire revenues and expenses for the year to boot. He doesn't get to take it to the bank.

[hippiechick]

4. Grrrrr .....

:nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

I am so not impressed with that man.



:hippie:

[0rganism]

5. Hmm, this could be disastrous

If Trippi is carrying a grudge, it could translate into some really vile smears.

[UTUSN]

7. Meet the Next Pat CADDELL

A regular with Tweety, bitter ex-Dems blasting Dems. CADDELL's only victory was CARTER, afterwards a string of losing p.r. campaigns including the "New Coke". TRIPPI has a record of beating OTHER DEMS in primaries, but losing in the general elections. He will FIT RIGHT IN with Tweety. CADDELL's niche is to be purer-than-thou, an IDEALIST who despises the current generation of Dems who just do not live up to his purity.

[UpInArms]

8. sounds a lot

like George Staphylococcus of A(ll) B(ush) C(over-up)

[mrdmk]

11. I heard Joe Trippi on CNN last week

He was on his cell phone driving from Vermont to Maryland (going home)after his resignation. The man sounded like he was going to have a nervous breakdown (crying on air). Trippi wished Howard Dean the best of luck and Trippi still thought that Dean was the number one man for the White House.

[rhite5]

12. There ARE a lot of misperceptions here.

There is no question but Trippi was a genious in the campaign job he was given.

He broke new ground and totally revolutionized the way campaigns will be run in the future. It was not just the fundraising. It was a big combination of things -- maximum use of the internet, using MoveOn, using MeetUps, and developing good organizations on the ground in every state and region in the country and genuinely fundraising unprecedented amounts of money from the grassroots. These things had never been done in this way before.

I also believe he was completely devoted to Dean's Campaign.

Dean is not out of the race of course. All of his networks still exist. And Super Tuesday has not happened yet. We've mostly had a handful of small states with few electoral votes. No one has a lock on the nomination. It could still go to a brokered convention.

But in my opinion Dean really could not afford to lose Joe Trippi, and it looks like Trippi was taken by surprise. Was this an impulse move by Dean or something else?

The media has taken Dean down and elevated Kerry. How else to explain how Kerry moved from polling down around 6% to the top of the pack in only a few short weeks? The media is a very very powerful influence.

btw - Like David Corn at The Nation, I find Dean's replacement choice for Trippi's position very much out of character. Not Good news for a campaign that was supposed to be a people's movement and which looked in every way like it WAS a people's movement.

[UTUSN]

14. Nobody Said TRIPPI Didn't Have His Accomplishments

Breaking ground and having accomplishments is why somebody has "a name". But the list of accomplishments doesn't necessarily add up to the final impact of his career. I couldn't find The New Republic profile of TRIPPI, where his dirty trick propelling MONDALE over Alan CRANSTON is documented. So, dirty trick/politics, what the hey. His accomplishments don't change that his victories have been over OTHER DEMS, not over Repukes.

As for, "The media has taken Dean down and elevated Kerry."---please.

Here are some of CADDELL's claims to fame, for comparison.

*******QUOTE*******

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1568580231/ref=sib_rdr_ref/104-4603442-9018339?keywords=Pat%20Caddell&v=search-inside

.... Caddell used those techniques in the 1976 campaign, when early poll ... dynamic that modern polling had anticipated long before it occurred ....

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/gahr013101.asp

.... But Caddell is dismissive of such lefty stalwarts such as Minneota Democrat Sen. Paul Wellstone, saying they're probably just "happy if they get their phone calls returned." The problem, as he sees it, is that the Democratic Party has no central vision. It's become an ersatz Republican party. "The party gets its money from the same places the GOP does, other than unions." ....


http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/50/a.php

.... he was cajoling Richard Riordan to launch a write-in bid for governor -- Caddell hates Gray Davis that much. He regularly turns up at Arianna Huffington's Brentwood salons, and can be seen on CNN, excoriating hypocritical liberal Democrats, as only a wounded idealist can. Angry, never soft-spoken, always defiant .... Nobody crusades quite like Pat Caddell. He lost 49 states for Walter Mondale, just as many for George McGovern, and all 50 for the New Coke.

********UNQUOTE*******

[Native]

13. Trippi was on Imus this morning, and Imus asked him

if he was making more money as an analyst than as Dean's campaign manager. Trippi said that his analyst gig (my word) was for one night and that they'd asked him to come back on Saturday. He figured he'd give it a try. He also said that campaign managers (in general) don't make any money and many times end up losing money.

[progressivebydesign]

15. That was a non-answer from Trippi.

I'm a Dean supporter who wasn't sorry to see Trippi go. I do give him his props for tapping into a great grassroots movement. I think, that in the push to make it feel grassroots, he cartoonized Howard too much. Dean's ideas are first rate, but he was marketed like a Chia Pet. The campaign never slipped into the professionalism I thought it deserved. Also, it became too much about Trippi, and not enough about Dean. I cannot name the campaign manager of any other candidate, and I've been following the race closely. I don't know the name, but I do think I remember that Kerry's campaign manager is a communications director for the Democratic Party... but the name? Nope. But.. Trippi was signing autographs!

Trippi's answer about Campaign Managers not making any money was purposefully misleading. How about your cut of Dean's HEFTY ad campaign? Be honest.. he made it sound like he worked for free.