[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: Dean Stirs the Democratic Party -- Again

[Paul Etxeberri]

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>Subject: Dean Stirs the Democratic Party -- Again
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>Now He Has the Power
>
>by JOHN NICHOLS
><http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050307&s=nichols>
>[from the March 7, 2005 issue]
>
>With the selection of Howard Dean as its chairman, the
>213-year-old Democratic Party has become something it
>has not been for a long time: exciting. A measure of
>that came three days before the 447 members of the
>Democratic National Committee chose him, at a pre-
>victory party Dean held in a microbrewery just blocks
>from DNC headquarters. Hundreds of his mostly young,
>mostly liberal supporters packed the place to hear Dean
>declare the Democrats to be the "party of the future."
>They also got a signal that he remained "their man," not
>the neutered version of himself that party insiders were
>still hoping he might become in his new role. When a
>backer bellowed the updated Harry Truman slogan that
>became a mantra for Dean's presidential campaign--"Give
>'em hell, Howard!"--a wicked grin rippled across Dean's
>face. "I'm trying to be restrained in my new role," he
>chirped. "I may be looking for a three-piece suit." Then
>he burst into laughter and exclaimed, "Fat chance!"
>
>The crowd cheered. Reporters flipped open notebooks. A
>faint shudder was heard from the offices of
>Congressional Democratic leaders. And Republicans,
>recalling the Iowa caucus incident that so damaged
>Dean's presidential prospects, repeated their tired take
>on the Vermonter's political resurrection: "It's a
>scream."
>
>But unlike past DNC chairs, Dean won't have to scream
>for attention. Taking over as chairman of a party that
>is locked out of the White House and unable to muster
>anything more than a "minority leader" to flex its
>legislative muscle, Dean has positioned himself as the
>most camera-ready Democrat in the country. As such, he
>is in a position to make his party--as opposed to an
>individual candidate or faction--more newsworthy and
>potentially more dangerous than it has been in decades.
>What remains to be seen, however, is whether Dean's
>tenure will prove merely a wild ride or a ride into the
>flourishing future the new chair promises: with huge
>gains in the 2006 elections and a Demo- cratic President
>marching down Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20, 2009.
>
>Dean has become the Democratic Party's Rorschach test.
>Frustrated grassroots activists and donors see him as
>the tribune of their antiwar, anticorporate and anti-
>Bush views. Big thinkers see him as an idea filter who
>understands the potential of neglected issues and
>strategies. State and local party officials recognize
>him as a former governor who understands that Democrats
>can compete in all fifty states and is more likely to
>listen to them than Congressional leaders who remain
>obsessed with "targeted" states and races. Mississippi
>Congressman Bennie Thompson sums up the pro-Dean
>sentiment when he says Dean will "bring new spirit and
>new energy to the party, the likes of which we haven't
>seen in a long time." But his enthusiasm is not echoed
>by the Democratic insiders in DC who have gotten so used
>to playing politics by GOP rules that they see Dean as a
>"madman" on a suicide mission that will wreck everything
>they know. New Republic commentator Jonathan Chait put
>their fears into words when he grumbled that "Dean, with
>his intense secularism, arrogant style, throngs of high-
>profile counterculture supporters and association with
>the peace movement, is the precise opposite of the image
>Democrats want to send out."
>
>The fact that Dean inspires such diverse passions among
>Democrats says as much about the party's current
>troubles as it does about him. The truth is that his is
>a fairly conventional story of political progress. He
>was a successful, if not particularly progressive,
>Vermont governor who--in the tradition of small-state
>governors making big splashes in national Democratic
>politics--mounted an innovative run for the presidential
>nomination that inspired bedraggled party cadres. That
>campaign was doomed not by Dean's antiwar rhetoric or
>advocacy of domestic reforms but by his bumbling
>transition from insurgent to frontrunner. Were it not
>for another candidate's bumbling, that might have been
>the end of his story. "If Kerry had won, he would have
>picked the chairman and it wouldn't have been Howard,"
>says Mike Tate, a former DNC member who worked for
>Dean's presidential campaign. "What happened in November
>opened up a debate about the party's future that Dean
>could be a part of. In fact, he'll be leading it."
>
>Historically, the DNC has rubber-stamped as chairman the
>choice of whatever establishment figure was calling the
>shots--a President, former President, Congressional
>leader or big contributor. But with Kerry defeated, Bill
>Clinton retired and Democratic Congressional leaders
>struggling to remain afloat in the GOP tide, the way was
>clear for something Democrats hadn't seen in years: a
>genuine contest. The competition suited Dean and the
>activists, but it horrified Beltway Democrats. Much of
>the griping about Dean by the party's Washington elites
>and their amen corner in that city's punditocracy was
>rooted in their faith that the DNC chairman was supposed
>to be someone like them: a DC veteran who knew more
>about where to grab lunch near K Street than about the
>best diner in Keokuk, Iowa. Thus, they cheered as House
>minority leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader
>Harry Reid (as well as Kerry) all moved to block Dean's
>return to the fray. They never quite figured out that
>Dean was going to win because he'd been to that diner in
>Keokuk, and he'd met there with beleaguered grassroots
>Democrats who appreciated his saying, "We need to be
>proud to be Democrats"--and appreciated even more his
>suggestion that the way to express that pride is as a
>genuine opposition party.
>
>"Dean understands that the essence of a good political
>communicator is somebody who can execute strong message
>contrasts," says former DNC chair David Wilhelm, a
>Chicago-based pol who never quite fit into the
>Washington scene. "Maybe what seemed wild in a
>presidential candidate will seem much more normal in a
>chair of a national party." As such, Dean picked up lots
>of support from Democrats who were never Deaniacs but
>knew the party had to change. "The Washington axis tends
>to cast the question in terms of right versus left, but
>the better way of looking at it is outside versus
>inside," former Labor Secretary Robert Reich told a
>reporter. "The Republicans have somehow managed to root
>themselves outside of Washington, and it's worked to
>their advantage. But the Democrats are rooted now
>essentially inside the Senate. Ugh. The argument for
>Dean is that he'll help change that."
>
>A story line being developed by Dean's critics, and some
>Dean enthusiasts, says his people took over the party.
>They didn't. Dean won the contest by doing what he did
>best during the 2004 campaign: relentlessly working the
>phones to connect with the people who do the heavy
>lifting in the party (he called the Arizona Democratic
>Party chair at 10:30 on a Saturday night to discuss the
>DNC race) and getting local activists in neglected
>corners of the country excited. "I was not going to vote
>for Howard Dean," says Randy Roy, a Topeka hotel owner
>and Kansas representative on the DNC. "Then I heard him
>and he won me over. He doesn't put his finger up in the
>wind. He says we are the party of social justice. We are
>the party that evens the playing field for the little
>guy. And he recognizes that we need to say that again
>and again and again."
>
>The Washington-insider line on Dean was that he would be
>anathema to Democrats from "red" states like Kansas,
>where Kerry won only a single county. The reality was
>the opposite: Some of Dean's first major endorsements
>for chair came from party leaders in Alabama,
>Mississippi and, yes, Kansas. When Reid suggested that
>Justice Antonin Scalia would be an acceptable Chief
>Justice, Dean disagreed. That created a stir in
>Washington, including an "it's not your job to set
>policy" admonishment from outgoing chair Terry
>McAuliffe. But it didn't hurt Dean with DNC members.
>"That, to me, is one more reason to elect him chairman,"
>says Roy.
>
>Now that Dean is chairman, he'll have to strike a
>balance between grassroots Democrats, who want the party
>to be more muscular in opposition, and Congressional
>Democrats, who tend to believe, as Pelosi has argued,
>that the chair will "take his lead from us." Dean, who
>once ran the Democratic Governors Association and knows
>a lot about party etiquette, won't go to war with the
>Congressional leaders. But, as one Dean backer said, "He
>has to prod them. I mean, what's the point of making
>Dean party chair if he isn't going to get these people
>to use their backbones?" Dean's aides say he will lie
>low initially, looking for fights where he can put a
>charged-up party to work for Congressional Democrats,
>perhaps in defense of Social Security, perhaps in
>opposition to a Supreme Court nominee.
>
>Dean will paper over a lot of tensions if he can make
>the DNC as essential for Democratic candidates as the
>RNC is for Republicans. Even before Dean's election as
>chair, the DNC made a major commitment to aid party
>nominees in 2005 contests for mayor of New York City and
>governor of New Jersey and Virginia. And the DNC will be
>all over the 2006 fights for the Senate, where Democrats
>will struggle to defend more seats than the GOP, and the
>House, where Democratic prospects should be somewhat
>better. But Dean's best chance to prove himself will be
>at the state and local levels, where three dozen
>governorships, attorneys general slots, control of state
>legislatures and thousands of county posts that are
>vital to rebuilding the party's infrastructure will be
>at stake. Dean's pledge to transform the party into a
>grassroots organization "that can win in all fifty
>states" will be put to the test. Dean--energized by the
>success that Democracy for America, the successor
>organization to his 2004 campaign, had in aiding
>successful local campaigns in places like Salt Lake
>County, Utah, and Montgomery, Alabama--relishes the
>prospect, an attitude that distinguishes him from
>predecessors who seldom found time for legislative
>races, let alone county commission contests.
>
>Dean starts with a DNC that is financially sound--
>McAuliffe left a surplus, and Kerry just kicked in
>another $1 million from unspent campaign funds--and that
>has developed a broadened base of small donors. But Dean
>will need to expand that base, not only because it will
>free him and the party from the constraints placed on it
>in the 1990s by an overreliance on big donors and
>special interests but also because his ambitious program
>will require him to move a lot of money out of the DC
>headquarters, which McAuliffe spent so much time
>renovating. Dean's plan to spend at least $11 million
>annually to beef up state parties will be his most
>expensive early initiative. But he has a lot of big
>ideas. "The tools that were pioneered in my
>[presidential] campaign--like blogs and Meetups and
>streaming video--are just a start," he says. "We must
>use all of the power and potential of technology as part
>of an aggressive outreach to meet and include voters, to
>work with the state parties, and to influence media
>coverage."
>
>One of the most intriguing measures of the difference
>between Dean and his DNC predecessors is the excitement
>his election has generated among people with big ideas
>about strategy and policy. Internet innovators like Zach
>Exley and Zephyr Teachout have already made smart
>proposals for how to push the technological envelope
>[see Katrina vanden Heuvel's February 13 "Editor's Cut"
>weblog at www.thenation.com]. But where Dean could cause
>the greatest stir is in championing bold new approaches
>that will again make the Democrats a party of ideas. He
>still converses with the wide circle of academics and
>activists who, during the 2004 campaign, transformed an
>initially cautious candidate into a champion of
>innovative proposals to create a national commission on
>how to restore democracy, break up media conglomerates
>and force corporations to provide not just a full
>financial accounting but also a social accounting of
>their adherence to environmental, labor and community
>standards. After the campaign finished, Dean kept
>talking to public intellectuals like Benjamin Barber,
>who introduced him to progressive leaders from around
>the world on a trip to Rome last year, and whose ideas
>about how America can relate to the world offer the
>party a framework for a positive internationalism.
>
>What's genuinely exciting about the Dean chairmanship is
>the prospect that the party might come to mirror its new
>chief's enthusiasm for bold stances and strategies.
>Dean's best applause line in the race for DNC chair was,
>"We cannot win by being Republican-lite. We've tried it;
>it does not work." For all the important talk of
>rebuilding state parties and using new technologies,
>what matters most about Dean's election as DNC chair is
>his recognition that Democrats have to be serious about
>holding out to Americans the twin promises of reform and
>progress, and that they are not going to do that by
>tinkering with the status quo. "We just can't let the
>Republicans define the debate anymore. We have to be the
>party of ideas," Randy Roy says from Topeka. "Dean
>understands that we have to be the party that shakes
>things up."
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand