A Suicidal Selection (JONATHAN CHAIT on Dean)

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-chait4feb04.story
JONATHAN CHAIT
A Suicidal Selection
With Dean as party chairman, the Democrats wouldn't need enemies.
JONATHAN CHAIT

February 4, 2005

<snip>The conventional rap against Dean as DNC chairman is essentially the same as the conventional rap against him as presidential candidate a year ago. Namely, he reinforces all the party's weaknesses. Democrats need to appeal to culturally traditional voters in the Midwest and border states who worry about the party's commitment to national security. 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.<snip>

It's a role for which Dean is particularly ill suited. During his campaign, remember, he fashioned himself a straight talker, delighting reporters by repeatedly wandering "off message." On the plus side, he won friends in the media by appearing honest and human. On the negative side, he did himself enormous damage, when, for example, he suggested that he wouldn't prejudge Osama bin Laden until he had been convicted in a court of law. <snip>

For presidential candidates, the negatives of "straight talk" usually outweigh the positives. Paul Maslin, Dean's former pollster, wrote in the Atlantic Monthly after the campaign fell apart: "Our candidate's erratic judgment, loose tongue, and overall stubbornness wore our spirits down." But at least for a presidential campaign there are some positives in going off message. In a job like party chairman, a loose cannon is nothing but downside.

So, how did Dean manage to trounce all comers for this position? Dean's supporters see his triumph as the victory of the masses over a tiny Democratic elite desperately trying to cling to power. As one left-liberal blogger gloated: "The fact that Howard Dean will most likely be heading up the Democratic Party is our victory. It is the voice of the grass roots lifted up into the halls of power once owned by the 'aristocracy of consultants.' " That actually has it backward. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that only 27% of Democrats approve of Dean.<snip>

Chait and the New Republic have it all wrong...what this LAST election demonstrated is that FEEDING the faithful brings them out in droves...we just needed to get a few more out.

<on edit: translated from the German>

"I'm sitting in the smallest room in my house. I've got your article in front of me. In a moment, it will be behind me."

.... my sentiment exactly. If only my printer could handle TP.

n/t

our state chairs?

A poll over a vote? We'll see on February 12. This guy is hilarious.

Chait would have HATED Harry Truman.

article which trashes Dean and most of the Democratic Reformers. For more on Chait's views here's another of his columns.

It's amazing to see the "hissy fits" of these folks telling our party grassroots what it should be thinking. They are falling all over themselves in histeria over Dean...while those of us who worked out butts off for the ABB Candidate are convinced that it wasn't worth it. We should have just given the hell up, because the DNC/DLC and party establishment didn't want a Democrat to win. They like the "status quo" of LOSER! Sheesh....it's amazing how these "writers" want to tell us what to think" which payroll are they on? It might not just be the Repugs who pay folks to write crap.

Here's a snip from one of Chait's other columns:


Dean, Clinton and Kerry: No, No, No for 2008
Democrats, lock these losers out.
JONATHAN CHAIT

November 26, 2004

Thanksgiving is traditionally an occasion for Op-Ed columnists to put aside their customary bile and offer up heartfelt thanks for the many blessings that we Americans share. But I say: Heartfelt thanks are what grandmothers are for. I'm going with bile. This week's topic is Candidates Who Obviously Covet the 2008 Democratic Nomination and Who Must Be Stopped at All Costs From Obtaining It.

Let's begin with Howard Dean. Most of us thought that Dean's spectacular defeat in the Iowa caucuses last January meant the end of him and his movement. Instead, it was more like the ending to "Terminator 2," where the evil robot is blasted to smithereens and presumed dead, then the fragments slowly regroup and come to life. As we speak, Deaniacs are reconstituting in their yoga studios and organic juice bars, plotting — in their benevolent, cheerful but fundamentally misguided way — to make Dean the leader of the Democratic Party.

Why would this be such a disaster? Because, remember, the Dean campaign advanced two novel theories about national politics. The first was that Democrats paid too much attention to winning over the center. What they really needed to do was mobilize the base by nominating a candidate like Dean who'd fire up liberals. This turned out to be doubly wrong. Democrats were fired up enough that they didn't need a Howard Dean to inspire them to unprecedented enthusiasm. And a fired-up Democratic base, volunteering and donating at unprecedented levels, was not enough to win.

Second, Dean argued that Democrats didn't really need to engage the cultural issues that Republicans had long used to win white, working-class voters. Instead, Dean argued, it would be better to persuade culturally traditional whites to vote their economic self-interest. But of course, a candidate can't always decide for the voters what issues they should pay attention to. Economics is complicated. Cultural issues are visceral. The presidential election showed pretty decisively that Democrats can't get a hearing on their more popular economic platform if voters don't think their values are in the right place. A secular Yankee like Dean is about the worst possible candidate.

Unless, of course, the alternative is Hillary Clinton. OK, maybe she wouldn't be worse than Dean. But she surely would go down in flames if she won the nomination in 2008. President Bush owed his victory in large part to cultural division. If there's anybody who incites cultural divisions, it's Hillary Clinton.

Her advisors point out that she's religious and speaks the language of Scripture. That's nice, but nobody seemed to notice it during her eight years in the national spotlight. She's painfully uncharismatic. Her only political accomplishment is that she won a Senate seat in an extremely Democratic state, where she ran six percentage points behind Al Gore. Clinton's supporters like to note that she's not as liberal as people think. That's exactly the problem. I can see the logic behind nominating a liberal whom voters see as moderate. Nominating a moderate whom voters see as liberal is kind of backward, isn't it?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-chait26nov26,0,7805945,print.column

Unless, of course, the alternative is Hillary Clinton. OK, maybe she wouldn't be worse than Dean. But she surely would go down in flames if she won the nomination in 2008. President Bush owed his victory in large part to cultural division. If there's anybody who incites cultural divisions, it's Hillary Clinton.

Her advisors point out that she's religious and speaks the language of Scripture. That's nice, but nobody seemed to notice it during her eight years in the national spotlight. She's painfully uncharismatic. Her only political accomplishment is that she won a Senate seat in an extremely Democratic state, where she ran six percentage points behind Al Gore. Clinton's supporters like to note that she's not as liberal as people think. That's exactly the problem. I can see the logic behind nominating a liberal whom voters see as moderate. Nominating a moderate whom voters see as liberal is kind of backward, isn't it?

I mean - all us blues in red states can see this clearly.

I should be supporting in 2006 or 2008. The "Media" doesn't think for me or for most DU'ers. And the hacks who write this crap are interesting to read for how "out of touch" with the grassroots they are.

Any MSM columnist or reporter who thinks they know what's going on in Dems minds out there today and writes as if they have the "inside view" is just as suspect as Novak or William Kristol writing about the Dems.

I actually re-subscribed to that rag a few months back (digital only, but still.)

T.A. Frank's Washington Diarist from last week, whining about having to attend an "ideological fringe" group's post-Coronation event, might have been the most pathetic case of self-loathing by a "Democrat" I have ever read.

Ever.

Whats with Beinhart and the rest? It's really discouraging to read them, when most of us are looking for "upbeat news" they instead seem to want to discourage grassroots enthusiasm for change in the party.

many of them write for TNR.

and bring all the separate factions together.

He made poor judgments during the campaign because he was still reconciling his newfound progressive voice with his centrist style of governance, caught up in a wave he wasn't prepared for and likely had little rest.

If Dean's more virulent supporters would give Dean the room to operate more true to his nature, they would make his job a helluvalot easier with a greater chance for success.

I don't think Chait has thoroughly examined all the factors FOR Dean.

with grassroots.

It's a cryingshame more of his grassroots supporters refuse to accept that Dean IS a Centrist.

we lost the presidency in '04--an election we should have by all rights have won. We lost ground in both houses of congress--and Dean is a disaster?

what a grapefruit is to vinyl siding.

Chait can F$&% himself!

at least people will pay attention, instead of saying "Terry McAuliffe who??". Chait is a bit pompous, no?

a WSJ poll? What the hell is that guy thinking?

What in the Everylovin' Fuck is THAT supposed to fucking mean?

That he's not a holy roller runnin' fer prezdint?

I mean, What In the Fuck, IS that supposed to mean?

I am absolutely astonished that this country has gotten to the point that a fucking politician has to be qualified as some kind of goddamned theocrat, or he is now "wild, out of touch, not mainstream"

"Counter-culture"?????????

Balanced budget.
Keep religion and state separate.
Let states regulate gun ownership.
Civil unions for gays ok.
No unnecessary wars of conquest.
Universal health care (hell the rest of the civilized world has that)

HOW in the HELL is this platform radical??? I do not understand my country anymore. I don't recognize it. The fucking Jayzus Freaks have taken over and I want my country back, dammit!!!


:mad:

I guess.

Here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1566601

let the games begin. We are with you all the way Guv'nah

during his governorship of Vermont, and the accomplishments of DFA in both red and blue states. But then, that would make his article completely unnecessary, wouldn't it?

not one of his best moves but he is taking the
heat off Kinsley....

Why on earth?

of the LA Times and Chait is a regular columnist
now.

He may have been linked from somewhere else, but I seem to recall him being one of the early Salon folks who moved on.

Anyone remember him from there?

POISON!!!!

The DINO triangulation scheme has lost us three major election cycles.

Time for a change I think.

Go Dean!!!

I read this early this morning and was aghast at the idiocy of it. First, Dean is a centrist, and anyone with a scrap of sense will see this. He's farther to the right than any of the other primary contenders than perhaps Lieberman; take the war vote and the lockstep support of Israel away from it, and even Lieberman's more to the left.

Dean's a great choice. He's a lightning rod. He's hotheaded and sloppy, but remember: that was the first real campaign he ever had to fight. He's a Brahmin who "gets it", as John Edwards pointed out. Kerry is too. Dean got hit with the most elemental of classic campaign dynamics: when in a crowded field, the one who surges early gets clobbered from every side. He was also his own worst enemy with the missteps and the questionable (some downright false) statements about his opponents.

Through all this, he still stands unbowed, and he's a quick learner.

The very fact that the hating primitives of the right seethe so at the mention of the man's name is almost enough to select him as the best spokesman. Mercifully, he has much more going for him than that.

That he sees the need to give more DNC money to the state people as a fight over "perks" says it all -- poor man doesn't understand what's going on

Of course the corollary to that would be, "The positives of deceptive and misleading talk usually outweigh the negatives."

In layman's terms, "Being dishonest and deceptive with the people is more likely to win you an election than being honest."

In still other words, "I prefer a candidate who is a liar, because he's more 'electable'.

But then we've got another Bush in office, right?

So self-professed dems who read the WSJ don't like Dean?

(ya think they could'a Freeped that poll? Nah...)

Sounds like a ringing endorsement.

that sure worked for us last election!

I dont think these "lets work with the liars, criminals & smear artists" DEMS know what they are doing.

We need more moral clarity than the "me too" Democrats are providing.

GO DEAN!

One thing I will say about the charge of "loose spending" is that it came close to winning him the nomination in my opinion. Dean started out as a very dark shade dark horse who developed a strong deep base of support that then spread beyond the initial core but which, as the primaries showed, had not yet reached the same depth of commitment across the board among most Democratic Primary voters. He came close to sealing the deal early nonetheless.

In business a technique that is sometimes used is to flash a lot of money and create the impression by so doing that an enterprise is confident and unbeatable, well heeled and well on the way to market dominance as evidenced by its wealth of resources and lack of need to cut any corners.

Given how little known Dean was to most Democrats at the start of the process I wonder sometimes if his ability to seemingly spend freely on his campaign worked to underscore the fact that Dean was a man who inspired people to give money to his campaign, who would be able to stand up to the Bush money reaping machine. It had a real up side.