At least now I can quit wondering and waiting for someone in the party to say a thank you to him. Now at least I know that all the time and money and enthusiasm my husband and I put into the party won't matter for a long time until the powers that be decide whether he gets credit due.
NYT indicates that for Howard Dean it will take several elections cycles to see if 2008 problems forgotten. It will take several election cycles to see if he gets any credit at all.
The problems they mention? Just what I predicted during the primaries. I said the
FL and MI primary problems would carry over later. I said that the truth would not be told about fundraising. I was right, but I wish I were not. The public will never hear that Dean
far outraised Terry McAuliffe, but that he spent the money getting bankrupt state parties back up and running.
The issue now is money -- not so much Dean's ability to raise it but his propensity to spend it. From Jan. 1, 2001, when Terence R. McAuliffe took over the committee, through March 31, 2004, the DNC raised approximately $127 million in funds that could be spent directly on campaign activities. Between Jan. 1, 2005, and March 2008, the DNC raised $190 million, considerably more.
But the DNC had $27.5 million in the bank at this time four years ago, as opposed to $4.4 million now. Dean aides say that money was well spent, creating organizations in all 50 states upon which Obama has been able to piggyback his campaign, reaching deep into an untapped electorate and developing the DNC's most complete national voter database ever. The investment will pay dividends not just in November but for years to come, they say.
Here's what the NYT had to say today.
Nagourney on Dean and seeking respect.These are so clearly talking points from the party leaders, so clearly sending a message to him and to the grassroots...that it sends a sort of chill down my spine.
It does not even mention the new Democrats who came in during the 2004 election, stayed to support Kerry, and stayed on to help rebuild the party with Dean as chair. Not a word, nor will there be.
Looking back at this presidential election, there is no question that Mr. Obama competed in — and won — states where Democrats had been shut out for years. But was this really the result of Mr. Dean’s 50-state strategy? Mr. Dean may indeed have foreseen that the Democratic Party was making a mistake in always focusing on the same handful of states. But as he argued, this was an investment that would take time to bear fruit. Again and again, he said the party had to think about its long-term growth, rather than just the next election or two. And a year in which Democrats were running against a party freighted by the most unpopular president in history — and amid an economic collapse — is probably not the best laboratory for measuring the success of his experiment.
Of course that is a technically true statement. Obama's campaign was of course not won by Howard Dean. Of course the Bush WH was crashing. But he did build on the idea and on the newly renovated parties throughout the states that were not there for Kerry in 2004. Dean knew the resources were not there, that is why he was rebuilding.
Mr. Dean sent resources into all these states. But one defining characteristic of the Obama campaign was the extent to which it insisted on keeping control over everything, often to the irritation of state Democratic leaders. Mr. Obama’s aides, while taking pains to praise Mr. Dean’s philosophical approach in trying to make the party more competitive in more states, said that the Obama campaign relied almost completely on its own staff, money and organization in making incursions into Republican states.
This is more than a simple who-should-get-the-credit post-election argument. Mr. Dean is very much thinking about his legacy after a campaign in which he was criticized for failing to mediate potentially divisive disputes among the candidates, for long-lasting fights over what to do about the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries (the party refused to recognize the votes because both states broke party rules and held their contests in January) and for his party’s difficulty in keeping pace with the Republicans in raising funds.
Should his 50-state strategy be vindicated over the next few election cycles, the problems of 2008 will certainly be forgotten. For Mr. Dean, it’s simply too soon to call the question.
Oh gee, thanks so much. In a few years they will come back and evaluate if there is any credit due. Wow, how nice.
The last two paragraphs, what can I say.
Mr. Dean, as can be forgotten considering his rise to national prominence as a losing presidential candidate in 2004 and as a highly combative party chairman now, is a medical doctor who, as former governor of Vermont, championed expanding health care coverage. He also is a favorite of the netroots.
That said, the man who Mr. Dean fought bitterly and famously with over his 50-state strategy was Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat who headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — and who Mr. Obama named last week as his chief of staff.
True indeed.
Markos is noticing the lack of appreciation, too. He has a mission as do I to make sure Dean gets credit due.
And by extension, credit due to us who supported the DNC's 50 State Strategy since early 2005. There is a move on to keep him from that credit even for exciting the base and getting the party jump-started again.
Ickes admits Dean was rightMarkos says one of his goals the "next few weeks is to make sure that Howard Dean gets his due props and, by extension, all of us who fought to make Dean's vision a reality."
Dean envisioned the Democratic Party building a new base in solidly Republican strongholds, and should Barack Obama win the presidency and Democrats expand their margins in Congress on Tuesday, as most polls predict, Dean will walk away from this election as one of the unsung heroes.
"Quiet" is not a word most people would have used for Dean four years ago, when he bowed out of the 2004 presidential race with a now-infamous scream.
But Dean, the former Vermont governor, took control of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2005 amid cries that he would embarrass the party — and from there, built the party’s political machine.
Even Dean’s one-time opponents give him credit.
"I think it’s partial vindication," said Harold Ickes, a longtime ally of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) who opposed Dean for the DNC chairmanship. "There are special circumstances in each state. In Alaska, who would have predicted the conviction of Sen. Stevens ?"
Markos concludes: "Partial vindication"? I'll take it.
Other bloggers are noticing as well. That is isn't just about giving credit to a man, it is about giving credit to a movement that started back in 2004. We lost the election, but we did try to bring change to the party.
Purple AmericaFrom The Nation 2007:
"It is, in short, one of the brightest ideas the DNC has had in its undistinguished history. And the timing could not have been better: The organizing is providing a channel for the disgust inspired by the mounting catastrophes of the Bush years. In deep-red states like Utah, it's ticked up the number of Democrats voting and candidates running (30 percent more in 2006). In "purple" states like North Carolina, where Democrats dominate most local and statewide elections, it's helping to turn red counties purple and purple counties blue, uncorking a new strain of progressive populism--the kind that won Senate races in Virginia for Jim Webb, Montana for Jon Tester and Ohio for Sherrod Brown.
And it might not outlive the next presidential election.
Why? For starters, look no further than the other modifier often attached to the effort: "Howard Dean's fifty-state strategy." From the moment the former Vermont governor launched his campaign for DNC chair in the wake of the Democrats' 2004 debacle, the party establishment--that shadowy claque of high-paid consultants, big-money donors, lobbyists, pundits, Clintonites and Congressional leaders--has been at pains to paint Dean's vision as another manifestation of the out-of-control tendencies they fretted about, and whispered so gainfully to the media about, when he ran for President.
Dean's campaign for party chair was an outsider's run at the ultimate insider's job, spurred by a meeting he had at the 2004 national convention with disgruntled party leaders from eighteen long-neglected "red" states. In his own 2004 run, Dean had "found himself in the odd position of a candidate in charge of a movement that grew up almost accidentally around him," says Elaine Kamarck, a Harvard public-policy lecturer and highly unlikely "Deaniac" best known for encouraging the party's break with New Deal liberalism as a Democratic Leadership Council strategist. "That gave him the insights that led to the fifty-state strategy."
Dean had also studied the national rise of Republicanism, when the GOP built from the ground up in Southern and Western states that had long been tough terrain for them. "The Republicans sat down thirty years ago and figured out how to do this," Dean says. "Through disciplined organization they were able to take over the country." He spotted another kink in the Democratic works, says strategist Donna Brazile, Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager. "Republicans start the campaign the day after an election, win or lose. They don't wait to have a nominee before they start putting together a battle plan," she says.
There is doubt now about the plan continuing.
Politics is rough, people tell me that here every day. But the thing is...this is different this time. This is not just about Howard Dean's name not crossing party lips since the election. It's about the blogosphere, netroots activists, grassroots, and those who worked hard for the change.
Politics is rough, but they better keep the enthusiasm going from everyone in the party...not just those in DC and in Congress. There's a long road ahead.
I saw this in the comments at
Spencer Ackerman's blog today. I’m just curious, is this how politics and the media work? It just seems like the people who have been right about a lot of things for the last few years get no recognition or have to fight hard to move ahead.
That appears to be how it is.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
