Scream 2: The Sequel (Rainmaker Dean narrows DNC fundraising gap with GOP)

[johnfunk]

Howard Fineman... saying something favorable about the Democrats? Well, I'll be...

Scream 2: The Sequel
Dean's mouth gives the Democrats plenty to talk about
By Howard Fineman and Tamara Lipper

June 20 issue - By the glamour-challenged standards of Washington, it was a big-box-office move. On short notice last Saturday, C-Span decided to cover—live—a normally snooze-inducing meeting of the Democratic National Committee. The big draw was the Beltway answer to Russell Crowe: DNC Chairman Howard Dean, whose phone-throwing attacks on Republicans have made him a star again. Earlier in the week at an "ethnic press round table" in San Francisco, Dean had branded the Republican Party "pretty much a white, Christian party"—as if that were some kind of a crime. Wise guys of both camps viewed the statement as a blunder, because, well, most Americans are white Christians. But at the rostrum of a downtown capital hotel, Dean defiantly declared that his characteristic feistiness had been good marketing for the party, drawing $100,000 in unsolicited donations from the Web in one day. "We are not going to lie down in front of the Republican machine anymore!" Dr. Dean shouted.

...

As a fund-raiser—the first duty of a party chairman and Dean's claim to fame in '04—he isn't quite the disaster some critics suggest. Early in the last "cycle," in 2001, the Republican National Committee outraised the DNC by a 3-1 margin. So far this year, that ratio has been cut to 2-1. More important is the way it was raised. In the past the party relied on "soft money" from millionaires. But such donations are now illegal. Officials esti-mate that $12 million of the $14 million the Dean regime has collected so far this year has come from those who gave less than $250. "For people who really look hard at the numbers, he's wowing people," says Elaine Kamarck, a respected DNC member.

Worth a read. (Link again.)

[Cha]

1. THis made me laugh and I've

never laughed at fineman article before..maybe Tamara wrote it..

"The big draw was the Beltway answer to Russell Crowe: DNC Chairman Howard Dean, whose phone-throwing attacks on Republicans have made him a star again.":D

[Carolab]

2. Hogwash, Howard. Dean has NOT placed the party as squarely secular

I wish these so-called journalists would learn how to research and READ.

Here is my response to Newsweek:

"Sirs"--

I suppose one "could" say that Howard Fineman and Tamara Lipper wrote a "fair" story about DNC Chair Howard Dean. However, I object to the continued and egregious reference to "the scream". Do you know that part of the reason the DNC's donations went up, as the article mentions, was because of a grassroots campaign to donate every time the media trash Dean? (By the way, treble damages apply everytime the "scream" is referenced/used.)

But I particularly object to the way in which the authors paint Dean's comments with a broad brush to portray that he is making the party out to be "anti-religion". I quote: "But by labeling the other party a bastion of Christianity, he implied that his own was something else—something determinedly secular—at a time when Dean's stated aim is to win the hearts of middle-class white Southerners, many of whom are evangelicals."

They go on to mention Cornell Belcher's findings: "Polltaker Cornell Belcher focused on why those voters aren't responding to the Democrats' economic message. One reason, he said, is that too many of them see the Democrats as 'anti-religion.' And why was that? No one asked Dean, who wasn't taking questions from the press."

Why, indeed? Could it conceivably be because of media members who consistently parrot the right-wing talking points that Republicans somehow own religion and/or "moral values"? (And, how, pray tell, do they demonstrate that? By violating every command that God handed down to Jesus and perpetrating a culture of corruption?)

Howard Dean's comments were meant to correct a misconception that Democrats are not Christians and to suggest that Democrats also include "other groups", while Republicans limit their membership largely to white Christians. That the demographic data bear this out, as evidenced in the Pew Research studies, is obviously of no interest to Mr. Fineman or Ms. Lipper.

I am a Christian, as is Dr. Dean. But, as he has also said, we don't "wear our religion on our sleeves". Moreover, religion, everyone seems to have forgotten, is by our Constitution a protected personal right, and separate from "state". Indeed, I might ask you in the media who keep hammering on this: How on earth has religious preference become a prequisite for political preference to the point where Democrats must now defend their religion?

I include an article below in order to help educate.

Stop twisting, taking out of context, and mischaractizing what the DNC chairman has to say. Bear in mind that each time you do, I, like hundreds of thousands of others, will take it as an opportunity to donate yet a few more of my pathetic, hard-earned, little "grassroots" dollars to the cause.

[Vadem]

3. Excellente!!!! Wonderful letter to Howie! Let us know if you get

a response.

:bounce: