Please Elect This Man
His name is Howard Dean, and he's running for Democratic National Committee Chairman.
Now when conservative like for example, Sean Hannity, says, "Please elect Howard Dean..." he's obviously being facetious. Hannity and many others believe that Dean is the kind of candidate that scares Middle America and thus will always lose elections. However, it's guys like Hannity whom can't see the forest for the trees. If the Democratic Party ever figures out that it is the party of progressive economic policies, that guy will be the last to figure out why the DNC is sweeping elections.
I've said many times before, for progressives, they lost the election in January of 2004. They lost when the pretender, John Kerry, beat the true progressive candidate. If you listened to people in Iowa and New Hampshire state why they voted for Kerry instead of Dean, they all pretty much said the same thing. "We like Dean but he can't win in a national election." They said the same thing about Nader. You know, if all of the people in this country actually voted for the candidate they liked instead of employing some weird marketing strategy, one party wouldn't have a monopoly over all the houses of government right now. There was a bumper sticker I saw which summed this all up and was once funny and sad: "Dated Dean, Married Kerry".
The rate of divorce is rather high in this country wouldn't you say?
The DNC has a chance to redefine itself in the eyes of America. They're not going to accomplish anything by putting forth mealy-mouthed centrists with no real agenda other than seeking power...like Kerry. There are fine economic progressive policies out there that are just screaming for someone to champion them. I think Dean in the guy. At least you know where he stands.
Finally, the marriage between Move.Org and the DNC has become most interesting of late. I read this morning that, "Liberal powerhouse MoveOn has a message for the "professional election losers" who run the Democratic Party: "We bought it, we own it, we're going to take it back." Whether you're a staunch conservative or a bleeding heart liberal, I think we can all agree, for the sake of our democracy, there needs to be strong opposition party. If MoveOn is the catalyst for that change then God Bless.
posted by Anonymous @ 9:40 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
It all depends if you want power back or not. The American mainstream has far to go before they see Dean as appealing. He's very far left and this is still a center-right nation.
Dems are going to have to make a decision; do they want to stand on principle or do they want a chance at power? If they want power they'll have to run to the banner of people like Evan Bayh. If principle is what Dems crave then it's Howard Dean they should gravitate to. The Dems will not gain power again until they can win over the middle again. Howard Dean is not the answer to this. Any Republican will be able to take Dean out to the woodshed just like Mondale and Dukakis.
You have a nice blog and I appreciate that your comments are always very well thought out, even though I do not agree with you.
First of all, I wonder how much influence the DNC Chair actually has on how people vote. I didn't see Terry McAuliffe’s merrits being debates that much during this year's campaign. However, if the chair was held by some one with a higher profile, like Dr. Dean, I do not see how the holder of this post would not be a larger factor in the debate.
There are definately a lot of pros and cons to this idea for the Democrats.
A few weeks back I found a post on a message board from someone who used to live in Vermont debating the merrits of Dean running for President again versus going after the DNC Chair.
He wrote:
"I would like to see Dean as DNC chairman, however, as I see it, he is not a viable choice for the presidency. I lived in Vt for 8 years, while he was in office. I met him numerous times. He is, without a doubt, a good, honest, well meaning man.
"That said, there were problems in Vt during his tenure as governor that, I believe, would be exponentially worse were he sitting in the oval office. I agree with most of his platforms and ideals. I was proud to live in a state where children had access to schools and healthcare, and same-sex relationships were recognized and offorded protection under law. I was proud for all those things and more.
"That said, his programs were based on ideals rather than practicality. His programs were easy to abuse, and created a culture of freeloading off of taxpayer money."
There was more to this, you can read it at:
http://democracyind.proboards39.com/index.cgi?board=democrats1&action=display&num=1099973694
Myself, I do not know if Dean is the right guy for the job or not. I do not know if he is the one who can re-define the Democratic Party into a player in Red America or not, but at least he would be a fresh voice and move the party away from the 2 and 2 record of Democratic Leadership Council style wonks.
For fundraising and grass roots campaigning, Dean is the guy. But for winning elections, that really is going to depend on the platform, the party's ability to focus and deliver their message, and, most of all, their ability to field compelling canidates.
http://democracyindistress.com
http://democracyindistress.blogspot.com
I’m seein a couple issues here.
First—Is a high-profile and some would say controversial former presidential candidate the ideal person for the chair’s job? Would it mean a repeat of voters sayin “I don’t think Dean can win a national election”?
I think we’ve got to separate the role of the chair from the role of the candidate. If it’s Dean’s intention to run for President again, then this might not be ideal. But how high profile is somebody like Karl Rove these days? Or any of Bush’s spiritual advisors? To be honest, I don’t know much bout the RNC chair’s profiles.
Except of course, that the co-chair in Ohio also ran the board of elections. And apparently to some people there’s no conflict of interest there. I fail to see a conflict of interest if the national chairperson’s ideals and vision resonate with the issues in the lives of the average American.
Perhaps the resonance occurs because of the coverage he received thru his prez campaigning. But it’s precisely his campaign style that can bring some freshness and direction to the DNC leadership.
This brings up aNuther Q—how does the struggle to elect a new chair really effect the direction of the party as a whole? I ask that meaning, will the leadership really be accountable to its base, its membership, and not the other way around, as it has been in the past. We’ve seen the party leadership walking the DLC line, and we’ve seen what happened.
So what does it really take to win a presidential election these days? We can’t win by being republican-lite. If we see the country as centrist-right on a national level, then maybe that can’t and shouldn’t be our primary fight.... yet. Think of the progression of the conservative rise to power. Where did they start? Where did their leaders first emerge? In school board elections. In really local elections.
This is what I see as the strength that a candidate like Dean brings to the DNC. Unlike the top-down, “beltway” focused DLC, his grassroots campaign building, as well as that of moveon and other similar orgs, built local structures of supporters and avid volunteers, many tapped by the kerry campaign to do their dirty work. These organizations supported many progressive candidates in their runs for local races, givin lots of people real concrete ways to get involved in their communities to change things, make a difference, feel good about their ability to gain access to power and act on things that mattered to them. And guess what? Many of their candidates won.
We’ve got to take notes from the right, and from our “left,” though I would hesitate to call peeps like moveon crazy radicals. I mean, come on, moms and their kids callin folks in swing states and talking to them about their issues and what they think about voting? Hardly radical. More like, as American as apple pie, or however the phrase goes.
Or maybe it’s radical because we’re talking about shifting the means of production. The organizations being built by groups like moveon, aren’t simply building a populist movement, they are taking on the structures of our so-called democracy and challenging the inadequacy of our elections process. Heaven forbid, somebody asks me if I’m gonna vote. My neighbor wants to know if I care about the cuts to my financial aid? What, people want to observe at the polling places? They want a receipt, or a recount?
Bein an organizer, I’m pretty confident that basic populist principles can appeal to the masses. And frankly, I think that is what scares the pants off the party leadership. Why? Cuz if they were really in touch with the people “below,” they’d realize they don’t really represent their constituency properly.
For real. How many people of color, how many low and middle income folks are in positions of authority? Make decisions?
If this is about organizing an “opposition”/ “opposing” party, call it what you will, the
leadership has got to have support from “below,” have legitimacy at the roots, or what’s the point of electing a chair, or havin a national party committee at all? What will they be coordinating?
To gain a groundswell of support for a national candidate TAKES TIME, it is going to have to be rooted in local issues and projects, and it’s gonna take a lot of coalition building.
And that means vision from below. And a lot of hard work. And funding the work of community organizations. I agree with the posts that complain about all the orgs and party leaders with serious institutionalized psychoses about how things work, leadership that has no accountabilty but is about preserving their positions.
This is a risky move, no doubt. There will be growing pains, no doubt. But, if the Democratic Party (and not just the leadership) wants to win, it’s going to have to undergo a serious facelift. The peeps at the top will have to go, and make room for leaders that have legitimacy, that resonate with the base, and can really carry the torch for a party that stands for…
Not against something.
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