Former OK Dem governor rants about OK election results with Dean.

madfloridian

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Fri Nov-07-08 11:55 PM
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Former OK Dem governor rants about OK election results with Dean.

He has an column at OpEdNews talking about his utter frustration with the election results. It's a good column, and he expresses his utter exasperation quite well.

We’re the winner of the national championship for the highest McCain/Palin margin at 65.6 percent; the only state where Republicans gained ground in the state house, senate and statewide offices; and the only state in which McCain/Palin carried every county.

Not one of our 77 counties went democratic, not a single blue dot (see chart). Sen. Obama polled 10.8 percent in Beaver County. This was not out of 100 votes where percentages are easily distorted, but out of 2,462 votes cast.

Now you are thinking that we cannot expect much progressive thought out of a county best known for its cow-chip throwing contest (two tries if you lick your fingers after the first). But I have been to Beaver county and met good people and don’t understand how 89.2% decided Sarah Palin should be vice president of the United States. It’s not just our friends in Beaver scouring the landscape for aerodynamic cow patties. Twenty-one counties fell below 25 percent for Obama and 39 counties, more than half of the 77, fell below 30 percent.

Just about that time Howard Dean (whose name is not to be mentioned in any favorable way in the MSM) called him. He "talked him down"...sort of.

The heart of our most democratic county only allowed Obama to get within 12.2 percent of a single county victory. Howard Dean called me as I was looking at these numbers. He wanted to say, “thank you” … for what I have no earthly idea.

I unloaded about our local results, but Howard didn’t take the bait. His politically correct language has been finely honed from thousands of scathing attacks on each of his utterances. He opined that the economy is much better in Oklahoma than most states and that many other states have a sizable portion of their population that would normally be concerned about leaders who are “different” than they are. But in those states the economy and the need for change overwhelmed their normal reticence to select someone “unlike” them.

Man that guy can talk.

While I am fuming, foaming, uttering and mumbling obscenities, he sounds like he just graduated from The Obama School of Cool. So should we do anything.

So thanks, Howard (whose name is almost forbidden on TV since the election). Thanks for all your hard work.

Oh, and hey, people are noticing that you are not getting mentioned at all. From the Phoenix East Valley Tribune.

I am surprised I haven’t read more this week about how much Barack Obama owes his victory in the presidential race to Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Sure, Obama has charisma, eloquence and a message of hope on his side. But Dean had the vision of how to manage a national campaign involving thousands of ego-driven politicians and prickly volunteers that prepared much of the ground for Obama to walk.

Many Americans remember the former Vermont governor only for the “Iowa scream” that seemed to single-handedly derail his 2004 bid for president (Not true, but that’s how a lot of people recall it). But in that campaign, Dean pioneered a lot of the Internet fund-raising techniques that Obama mastered this year to break all money records for a presidential election.

After Dean took charge of DNC in February 2005, he made two promises: Democrats would take control of Congress in the 2006 elections and the White House in 2008. He said that would be possible only by challenging Republicans directly in traditionally “red” states on issues such as health care, high-paying jobs and alternative energy. He rebuilt the DNC’s spending machine to direct more resources into every state and to specifically target the “Intermountain West” (from Montana to Nevada) because changing demographics meant new voters would be more likely to support Democrats.

In 2006, Dean guided the national party to identify six issues of concern to the entire country and did a remarkable job of convincing individual Democrat candidates to use those issues as the themes of their campaigns. Of course, this strategy was the same concept as Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America that propelled Republicans into control of Congress for 12 years. The only difference was Dean didn’t try to force every Democrat candidate in every race to commit to the national party’s position on all six issues.

We sort of know why, but that doesn't help. People are noticing.

Thank you, sir, for giving up 4 years of your life.

I think the former OK governor appreciates it also.