Many months ago, I thought to myself, Dean really has it figured out. He's taking his message straight to the people, insulating himself from the shifts in media opinion. Looking back now, I don't think I was wrong -- his core supporters were with him until the end, and they understood his message. Instead, I overestimated the number of people he was reaching with that strategy.
Obviously, the vast majority of primary voters to date were not devotees of blogforamerica.com. You can argue back and forth about whether the media took Dean down, but the huge upticks for John Edwards in states where he gets multiple major paper endorsements says pretty clearly that people still overwhelmingly look to the media for their opinions of political candidates.
Is it possible for a political candidate to do what I hoped Dean would do -- take his or her message straight to the people? Or are people just too lazy/apathetic/anti-politics to be bothered?