The Dean Revolution Continues

[empath]

It's not over yet. Kerry's pathetic presidential run was the last gasp of the old Democratic party.

The party will be back in 2006, kicking ass and taking names, if Dean gets in charge.

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/1/24/1589/46881

[nietzsche]

what evidence is there that Dean will do anything other than polarize the whole party? The Clinton's don't support him in this election and have tried to get Clark to run.

[empath]

Fuck the Clinton's, quite frankly.

What he'll do is energize the grass-roots and small-dollar donations and create an organization that can match the republican machine, and he'll fight to win in all 50 states.

He'll also get the Democrats back on message and reposition them as the party of "Reform". He's said multiple times that he's going to follow the Gingritch "Contract With America" model of creating clear, simple goals and following through on them, and clearly differentiating themselves from the Republican party in ways that won't alienate the heartland.

Basically, focusing on economic/fairness issues and getting away from the cultural hot-potatoes like gay marriage and gun control that have been killing the party in the red states.

You'll see, the Democratic Party will be an exciting place to be. The Blue Revolution starts now.

[Tigger]

I fervently hope that you are right!

[empath]

salon sums up my feelings nicely:

Why Dean should take charge
With his passion and populist appeal, Howard Dean is exactly the leader the Democratic Party needs right now.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Mark Hertsgaard

printe-mail

Jan. 24, 2005 | Florida Democrats' decision to unanimously back Howard Dean as the new chairman of the DNC (Democratic National Committee) shows two things: first, there are still some Democrats out there -- including in the supposedly hopeless South -- who have brains and guts and aren't afraid to think for themselves; and second, Dean now has a real shot at winning the DNC job and launching a much-needed makeover of the Democratic Party.

Political and media elites in Washington are at once horrified and dismissive of Dean's quest. They insist that Democrats would be crazy to pick a raving liberal like Dean as their next party chairman. But as is so often the case, this inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom is based on dubious "facts" and assumptions about how ordinary Americans relate to politics. Dean is exactly the leader Democrats need to become relevant again.

The Florida Democratic chairman's statement to the New York Times reveals just how out of touch the Washington establishment is: "I'm a gun-owning pickup-truck driver and I have a bulldog named Lockjaw," said Scott Maddox. "I am a Southern chairman of a Southern state, and I am perfectly comfortable with Howard Dean as DNC chair."

And the reason Florida Democrats like Dean?

"What our party needs right now is energy, enthusiasm and a willingness to do things differently," Maddox added. "I think Howard Dean brings all three of those things to the party."

Maddox isn't the only prominent Southern Democrat backing Dean. On Tuesday, the state chairman from Mississippi and the vice chairmen from Oklahoma and Utah announced that they too were endorsing the former Vermont governor, leading ABC News' influential The Note to declare that Dean "is now emphatically the front-runner" for the DNC job.

A year ago, Dean was jeered off the national stage by television's nonstop coverage of his "scream" speech. And it must be admitted that he showed some undeniable weaknesses as a presidential candidate in 2004, including a tendency to speak first and think later. But Dean is running for party chairman now, not president. The chairman's job is to rally and organize the party faithful to do the unglamorous but vital grass-roots work that will expand the Democratic base, reach out to new and uncommitted voters, and win future elections. As Maddox said, Dean fits that job description perfectly. He inspires grass-roots enthusiasm and his time as governor of Vermont grants him the necessary executive and administrative skills.

What's more, in the wake of the Democrats' loss to President Bush in November, Dean's political message, and especially the way he delivers it, looks better and better.

Dean, after all, was right about the central issue of the 2004 election -- the Iraq war. Nowadays, a majority of the American public believes that attacking Iraq was a bad idea. Dean was saying this -- and being criticized for it -- in the fall of 2003.

Dean was also right when he said Democrats should be the party not only of urban liberals but of "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," another comment he was derided for. But in view of how many centrist voters chose President Bush over John Kerry, even though Kerry's economic policies would have benefited them more, Dean's call to reach out to culturally conservative voters was prescient.

Above all, Dean was right that Democrats would win only if they told voters exactly what they stood for and why. Kerry never did that, especially on Iraq, where his reluctance to call the war (and not just its prosecution) a mistake let the president off the hook on his most vulnerable issue.

By contrast, Bush never shrank from saying what he believed. Like Dean, he understood a basic fact of American politics: voters value plain-spokenness in a politician much more than agreement on specific issues. Bush was even clever enough to steal one of Dean's signature lines: "You may not always agree with me, but you'll always know where I stand."

All of the news stories reporting Dean's decision to seek the DNC chairmanship repeated the standard rap against him: He's too liberal. But that charge doesn't reflect reality so much as it reflects the Washington establishment's version of reality. Dean was labeled a liberal by the media essentially because he opposed the Iraq war. Never mind that he was also a deficit hawk who opposed gun control, gay marriage and universal healthcare, or that many conservatives later embraced his criticism of the war. In the post-Sept. 11 mood of false patriotism, the media assumed that anyone who criticized an apparently successful war had to be a liberal, and that was that.

This mischaracterization has led observers to miss the real source of Dean's appeal to a jaded electorate: He knows what he believes and he's not afraid to say it plainly enough for ordinary people to understand. His vision for Democrats is not about moving the party to the left; it's about Democrats standing for something that resonates with ordinary Americans -- a task that current party leaders have manifestly failed to achieve.

Dean believes the Democratic Party's allegiance to big donors and cautious incrementalism has alienated many of its logical voters. Alone among prominent Democrats, he recognizes that the party has little future if it cannot connect in an authentic way with the extraordinary grass-roots energy that propelled his own presidential campaign (and that later nearly got Kerry elected, despite the Kerry campaign's many shortcomings).

In 2004, Dean rewrote the rules of presidential campaigns by using the Internet and local "meet-ups" to raise small donor money. But Dean's real secret was to give supporters real influence within his campaign and thus hook them on continued political participation. The idea of meet-ups, for example, came from the grass roots, not from campaign headquarters.

The Bush campaign tapped into similar grass-roots energy among conservatives and thereby expanded Republican turnout enough to gain the president a second term. Democrats must do more of the same in the years to come, and Dean is the leader who best understands that imperative. Dean, after all, is a populist. And his populism is not the brand espoused by President Bush -- a millionaire who shills for billionaires while talking like the common man. Dean's is the real thing. Which is why Republicans privately fear him.

Another part of the media consensus on Dean is that he only wants the DNC job to grease his run for president in 2008. For his part, Dean has declared he won't run if he gets the DNC job. Of course, he could change his mind. But it's worth remembering that presidential candidate Dean always said that Democrats must first reform their party and its approach to politics if they want to win the White House.

Dean is now traveling around the country telling his supporters that remaking the Democratic Party is a long-term project that could take 20 years. His first hurdle comes on Feb. 12, when 447 largely unknown party officials from around the country will vote for the next DNC chairman. The Florida and other Southern Democrats' decision to back him will, of course, be enormously helpful to Dean's prospects, but it also figures to call forth still more "anyone but Dean" efforts from the party establishment.

Everyone agrees the Democrats have to remake themselves; they just lost to perhaps the most vulnerable incumbent in history. The DNC vote will give the first hint of how they plan to proceed. At a time when America has never needed an effective opposition party more, let us pray Democrats can rise to the challenge.

[zartan]

This is soooo true:

All of the news stories reporting Dean's decision to seek the DNC chairmanship repeated the standard rap against him: He's too liberal. But that charge doesn't reflect reality so much as it reflects the Washington establishment's version of reality. Dean was labeled a liberal by the media essentially because he opposed the Iraq war. Never mind that he was also a deficit hawk who opposed gun control, gay marriage and universal healthcare, or that many conservatives later embraced his criticism of the war. In the post-Sept. 11 mood of false patriotism, the media assumed that anyone who criticized an apparently successful war had to be a liberal, and that was that.

This mischaracterization has led observers to miss the real source of Dean's appeal to a jaded electorate: He knows what he believes and he's not afraid to say it plainly enough for ordinary people to understand. His vision for Democrats is not about moving the party to the left; it's about Democrats standing for something that resonates with ordinary Americans -- a task that current party leaders have manifestly failed to achieve.

[Cactus Jack]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3606100/

Politics: What’s in Howard Dean’s Secret Vermont Files?

By Michael Isikoff
NewsweekDec. 8 issue - As investigative reporters and “oppo” researchers flock to Vermont to dig into Howard Dean’s past, they have run into a roadblock. A large chunk of Dean’s records as governor are locked in a remote state warehouse—the result of an aggressive legal strategy designed in part to protect Dean from political attacks.

Dean—who has blasted the Bush administration for excessive secrecy—candidly acknowledged that politics was a major reason for locking up his own files when he left office last January. He told Vermont Public Radio he was putting a 10-year seal on many of his official papers—four years longer than previous Vermont governors—because of “future political considerations... We didn’t want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time.” “Most of the records are open,” said Dean spokeswoman Tricia Enright, adding there is “absolutely not” a “smoking gun” in those for which Dean has claimed “executive privilege.” Still, Dean’s efforts to keep official papers secret appear unusually extensive. Late last year, NEWSWEEK has learned, Dean’s chief counsel sent a directive to all state agencies ordering them to cull their files and remove all correspondence that bore Dean’s name—and ship them to the governor’s office to be reviewed for “privilege” claims. This removed a “significant number of records” from state files, said Michael McShane, an assistant Vermont attorney general.

The battle over Dean’s records began last year when three Vermont newspapers took him to court after being denied access to his official schedule. Reporters were trying to track Dean’s out-of-state political trips. State lawyers argued that release of the schedule could jeopardize his safety and that the governor’s office was not a public “agency” covered by state open-records law—two notions rejected by the Vermont Supreme Court. (The court ultimately ruled that those portions of the schedule related to his political trips had to be released, but those relating to state policy could be redacted.) Then last January, Dean’s chief counsel David Rocchio negotiated a sweeping agreement that resulted in about 140 boxes of Dean records containing several hundred thousand pages of documents being locked up for 10 years at a state archive in Middlesex, said Greg Sanford, the state archivist. The sealed papers include Dean’s correspondence with advisers on, among other matters, Vermont’s “civil unions” law and a state agency that critics charged was used to grant tax credits to Dean’s favored firms. Rocchio said the sealing agreement was driven by “legitimate” policy concerns, but also by, he later acknowledged, political factors. “All you have to do is look at what [Dean’s opponents] are doing with the existing records,” he said. “They’re distorting his record.”

[zartan]

whats your point?

[Cactus Jack]

To me he looks like just another politician.

[zartan]

well you haven't looked at him long enough and are reading too much into cursory magazine articles about pieces of his life. read a good profile of dean and you'll see that he deserves much respect, even if you don't agree with him.

he's the democrat's john mccain, no doubt - except that the dems have a power/legitimacy vacuum that needs filling, whereas john mccain is a fish in a very big, very polarized, very structured pond.

[zartan]

i guess another way to put it is this - every politician is "just another politician". so you have to look at the totality of their actions, their lives, and their rhetoric. if you did that with dean, you would see that he really does have unique qualities.

yes, he is a politician. i mean, of course - he runs for political office. my understanding is that those personal records contain 'impolitic' off the cuff remarks of the type you and me and everyone else on here probably makes every day/writes in e-mails etc.

to expect that any politician would have a crystal-clear record and never utter a single word or have a single thought that he wouldn't want published in the newspaper is obviously ridiculous

[nietzsche]

but you have to agree, eric, that perception is paramount in politics. And telling people you're the Democrat's John McCain is not going to get you support within the DNC.

[Agent Sunshine]

Except that everyone outside of the most entrenched members of the DNC seem to realize that the party needs a major shakeup. So in that regard the perception as a maverick could certainly be to his advantage (and is probably exactly why he's doing well).

[zartan]

but you have to agree, eric, that perception is paramount in politics. And telling people you're the Democrat's John McCain is not going to get you support within the DNC.

sure. but the democrats are a failure as a party, whereas the republicans are not, at this point in time.

[empath]

From the Ground Up

By Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
This is one in a series of weekly syndicated columns written by Governor Howard Dean.

Over the past thirty years, Republicans have become the majority party in America by building a terrific grassroots organization. If we are to take our country back for ordinary working Americans, Democrats will have to match or exceed the Republicans ability to motivate voters.

Grassroots organization really has to be based on two way communication. In our Presidential campaign we started with no money, no base, but a great number of enthusiastic grassroots activists. We ceded decision making power to local folks and let them run things in their areas as they saw fit. This turns out to have been our single most important innovation, and it is the only one that wasn't copied by any of the other campaigns, either Democratic or Republican. Everything else, the small donor programs, the house parties, the interactive Web sites and organizing was used by others. The reason that the most important piece wasn't copied is because it requires real a change in thinking by people who run for office and their consultants, not just adopting new techniques or technology.

Letting go of central control is what gives voters real power. When I used the phrase "You have the power" during the campaign, I meant that by working together, Americans could overcome the forces of the right-wing and reassume their constitutional role in running the country. What I didn't understand was that "You have the power" was more than that. It didn't apply only to people's ability to change America, it also applied concretely to their ability to make every day decisions about how they would cause that change.

In our campaign, Americans without any previous political experience made decisions about when to leaflet, what to say in the leaflet, where to leaflet and how to organize. They organized and ran hundreds of organizations such as African-Americans for Dean, Latinos for Dean, Punx for Dean, Irish Americans for Dean, etc., which sprang not from a central "outreach" desk in Burlington, but spontaneously all over the country, finding each other on the Web, and creating a national organization from local ones

The idea of a decentralized campaign terrifies most politicians who have gotten used to putting out ideas and letting others respond. We discovered that the path to power, oddly enough, is to trust others with it.

The true mark of a modern campaign will be to listen to Americans and let them shape campaigns instead of simply allowing them to respond.

Our campaign was far from perfect, and we did not win. But our organization today is almost 600,000 strong that we know of, and there are more people in the organization today than there were on the day I dropped out of the presidential race. People still meet monthly in about 500 locations across America to talk about how to bring reform, and then they act on their plan locally.

I wish I could tell you that this was all because of my leadership and charisma; that is not so. The reform movement lives because it isn't mine. Our people know that they have the power in their own communities, linked across the country, to elect reform-minded people. They did exactly that on six months notice all across the country in places like Utah, Alabama, and Idaho, not just New York and Ohio.

If Democrats use this model, we will effectively leapfrog the Republicans, who despite their discipline and organization, are still a top-down, control and command organization.