What Dean Means

What Dean Means
By MATT BAI

Published: February 27, 2005


Two weeks ago, on the eve of Howard Dean's election as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, his old rival John Kerry -- the same John Kerry who had once been caught hissing ''Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean'' into an open microphone, in what sounded like an imitation of Jan Brady's ''Marcia, Marcia, Marcia'' -- sent an e-mail message to his supporters. ''Let's welcome Howard Dean and give him the groundswell of grass-roots support he needs,'' Kerry wrote enthusiastically, urging his followers to contribute to the party. The turnabout here, if anyone really stopped to think about it, was mind-bending. It was Dean, after all, who pioneered the Internet campaign, and it was Dean who had to urge his supporters, the most motivated in the Democratic universe, to accept Kerry as their nominee. And although Kerry emerged as the safer, consensus choice for president, it was Dean, alone among Democrats, who retained the personal loyalty of street-level activists and millionaire donors. Kerry urging his fans to give it up for Dean was like the leader of a warm-up band begging the audience to wait around for U2.

Somehow, at the end of the day, Dean managed to triumph over his rivals after all. Lashing out at Washington Democrats as timid and feckless during the primaries, he vowed to ''take back our party,'' and he did exactly that. The party's Congressional leaders could talk all they wanted about how Dean would be a mere functionary -- ''I think Dean knows his job is not to set the message,'' Harry Reid lectured -- but, like Kerry's welcoming e-mail message, such statements had the ring of self-delusion. The moment the votes for chairman were counted, Howard Dean became the de facto voice of the Democratic Party.

Dean would seem to be better suited to the chairman's office than he was to the White House. Up close, there was always something a little disconcerting about Dean's presidential campaign; he seemed to derive too much enjoyment from his followers' rage and idolatry. Dean's work after his campaign imploded, however, was more ennobling and, arguably, more important. Under the guise of his political action committee, Democracy for America, Dean ventured deep into Republican states where national Democrats rarely trod, raising money and campaigning not just for Senate hopefuls but also for candidates seeking offices as lowly as soil-and-water commissioner. Rural Democrats fear, perhaps with good reason, that Dean is the wrong messenger for the party in much of America, and yet not one of them has spent the time and capital Dean has on reviving the party in those sparsely populated states and counties where Democrats are fast disappearing.

Inevitably, Dean's ascension has been seen in the familiar Democratic context of center versus left, New Democrat versus old. Dean, it has been said, is too far left to lead a party that suffers from an image of extremism. But what Dean's selection actually makes clear is that these distinctions have less meaning in today's party than ever before. While Dean was a leftist, antiwar presidential candidate, he was also, as he never tired of reminding people, a defiantly centrist governor of Vermont. (Early in the presidential race, Dean told me, ''I was a triangulator before Clinton was a triangulator.'') Dean opposed the invasion of Iraq, but his rhetoric about winning the peace and fighting terrorists at home hardly contrasts with anything that supposedly moderate Democrats espouse. Dean likes to be described as ''pro-gun,'' but his actual positions are indistinguishable in every way from those of Democrats who favor stricter gun control.

more at...http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/magazine/27WWLN.html

Ain't gonna happen! Sick um Howard!!!!!!!!!!

here in Texas and some guy comes up to me and says, "nice dress".

They're scared alright.:scared: shitless.

:P

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/opinion/10964305.htm

surprised this hasn't gotten more attention on DU.

Far too left would be communists and full-on socialists, whom I would oppose as much as I oppose the Radical Right. I don't believe Dean is either of those.

a left-wing virtue.

I love the man because he tells the truth. He may not be a flaming lefty but he tells the truth. He won't back down.

i guess that makes him a lefty. This even though he is a fiscal moderate at best. He is a responsible honest person. Oh my God!

edit to clarify "fiscal moderate at best" some have said he is a fiscal conservative and not really moderate in other issues. I think he is a New Englander. They have a reputation for being thrifty. Not a bad thing. I personally don't think Dean is a far too left person. I think he probably pretty mainstream in most of his positions. It is just that in this country today mainstream as I define it is pretty far left

SNIP..."Dean, by his own admission, can occasionally be ruled by whatever mysterious furies haunt a Park Avenue-reared physician rather than by the rules of political decorum, and this is what worries people. He has promised to be more diplomatic and more deferential in his new role; the insider needs different skills, presumably, than the outsider he used to be. But should Dean turn out to be more like the impulsive and impolitic chairman that some of the party's leaders fear him to be -- the same guy who excoriated his rivals as spineless and then yowled through gritted teeth on national television -- then he might actually be something closer to what his party desperately needs....."

The last line.

<<But should Dean turn out to be more like the impulsive and impolitic chairman that some of the party's leaders fear him to be -- the same guy who excoriated his rivals as spineless and then yowled through gritted teeth on national television -- then he might actually be something closer to what his party desperately needs.>>

I'm so so so tired of it.