Can we really be stopped so easily?

To my fellow Howard Dean supporters, a little perspective:
One of the great people I’ve met as a campaign volunteer wrote me this morning, “Hi Christian, got your info about the … [tactical details omitted] … outreach. I think that is a good approach. However I’m concerned about the events over the past two days, i.e. Dean’s 3rd place showing in Iowa and his speech to his supporters that has gotten so much negative press. I fear that Dean won’t be able recover from all of this. Do you see any “rabbits in the hat” possibilities?”
I knew I need to think about and consider my reply carefully, and here’s what I ended up writing back after putting some thought into why I’m working for Dean and what I hope to accomplish:
There’s no doubt that our job just harder, but I’m not willing to give up at the first sign of a problem. Think about all the Kerry supporters and Edwards supporters and Gephardt supporters and Sharpton supporters and Moseley Braun supporters and even Lieberman supporters who kept their heads down and just did the work when their candidate was being written off by the media and politically savvy people like us.
I think this is like Bill Clinton’s Gennifer Flowers moment, when he and Hillary went on Barbara Walters or whatever and made a personal appeal to the nation’s livingrooms, in a calm, dignified setting. It sounds like Howard and Judy Dean are doing something similar tonight or soon?
Plus Dean is on Letterman tonight, so maybe he will show that he has a sense of humor and he can roll with the punches. Remember they elected a “pro” wrestler, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, as governor of Minnesota. Our governor is an old-school, graeco-roman wrestler, not a showboat. He takes his opponents down by stealth and by using his intelligence. It’s not as easy a road as the glamor-boy, Beatles/JFK appeal that Edwards has or the Viet war hero/Nixon enemy appeal that Kerry is showing, but I don’t think the game is over yet.
I’m not a pollyanna, by the way. If Dean can’t pull a good media storyline out of New Hampshire, we are down to a series of last-stands at the Alamo, state-by-state, and that will be almost impossible to survive, win, and still be popular enough to beat Bush.
I think we’ll know soon if Dean still has a chance or not, and if not, I may just volunteer for the Democratic party till there’s a nominee, or help out wherever I can. One thing about “It’s not about me, it’s about you” is that even if they can beat Dean (or Dean beats himself), we don’t have to quit the race.