Tag Archives: Howard Dean

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Over at the New York Times (quasi-)blog, Matt Bai is trying to take a bold stance against conventional wisdom by arguing that Howard Dean’s campaign did not, in fact, leave any lasting legacy for American politics:

Dr. Dean can hardly claim to have laid the rails for some powerful engine of change. His campaign, as he never tired of reminding us, was about “taking the country back,” which seemed another way of saying it was basically about winning.

It’s a nice try, but in this case the conventional wisdom (if that’s what it is – I thought the conventional wisdom, at least over at the Times, was that Dean was an unstable fanatic leading hordes of dateless college kids) is right. Bai’s basic argument, it seems, is that Dean didn’t run on a signature issue and therefore was only creative tactically but not ideologically. I think he’s wrong on two counts. First, as Dean himself has argued, the seeming unanimity among the Democratic candidates now obscures the fact that a year ago few were arguing that blasting Bush’s broken promises in Iraq, in public schools, and in the workplace was the Democrats’ route to success. Healthcare in particular was an issue that, while urgently important to millions of Americans for decades, Howard Dean put back on the map for a party largely convinced that because a zealous corporate lobby was able to tank a half-hearted moderate healthcare reform ten years ago it was relatively hopeless to try to cover most Americans.

Second, Bai is wrong to argue that Howard Dean’s tactics amounted to nothing more than really wanting to win. The significance of what Dean embarked on is demonstrated, as I argued at the time, by the incredulity of the New York Times magazine in trying to report what was driving his campaign. “Ordinary Americans convinced that there could be a connection between a broken political system and the challenges they’re confronting in their own lives? Must be like of some kind of Alchoholics Anonymous meeting. Why are they talking so much about themselves? Don’t they know only people who run for office are important?” An organizing model, like universal healthcare, is not a new idea. But what they have in common is that the Democratic party of the past couple decades has in large part left them to rust. And Howard Dean, for all his mistakes – like relying on Northeastern college students to canvass in Iowa rather than cultivating a stronger core of organizers from the state – helped bring them back to life.

There’s been a lot of talk recently among Democrats, particularly those committed to John Kerry, about how Howard Dean “brought people into the party.” That’s true, but it’s only half of the story, and in that sense is wishful thinking by those who want the Democratic party to stay the course of the past decade. Howard Dean, despite a conservative record of his own, chose that he could get farthest by being a vessel for a popular movement that existed before him and will continue after him – and in so doing, he took an important step towards bring the Democratic party back to the people.

The Wall Street Journal is closer to the truth than the New York Times on this one: “the most consequential loser since Barry Goldwater.”

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Dean’s speech tonight – while more faltering than usual for him – resoundingly articulated the lasting legacy of his campaign: a stronger, more combative, more visionary Democratic party. He also talked a lot in the past tense about the campaign, and quite vaguely in the future tense. “We are not done yet.”

Edwards found the perfect soundbyte to celebrate his surge while spinning Kerry’s narrow win: “Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.” And he does a tremendous job of looking like he doesn’t expect the applause but is happy to go along with it.

Kerry’s right to focus, in his speech now, forward on his vision for the country and to direct his anger at the sitting President. “Some of us know something about aircraft carriers for real.” And here come the three words again… There they are. He’s still a less than inspiring speaker though.

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Good news for the Dean campaign: They set up “Kitty’s Bat,” aiming to raise $700,000 in three days for Wisconsin, and after 24 hours it’s near $685,000. Some will argue the campaign intentionally set a low bar to create the appearance of momentum, or that promising to quit if he lost Wisconsin was enough to squeeze the last cash out of the true believers, but I think this demonstrates at the least that the media accounts of Dean’s supporters all having given up on the man is – like much of the media about him at various points – overblown. Whether this is a rebirth or a last hurrah, of course, remains to be seen.

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That liberal media, at it again:

Representative Dennis Kucinich has every right to keep campaigning despite his minuscule vote tallies, but he should not be allowed to take up time in future candidate debates. Neither should the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is running to continue running, not to win

Kucinich and Sharpton were, of course, perhaps the two most interesting candidates in those debates. And their presence raises the burning issues muffled by the consensus of the Democratic establishment. Lieberman’s presence, for that matter, should force the four NYT-approved candidates to argue for a vision of the Democratic party as meaningfully to the left of the Republicans – practice that could only help them.

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David Corn slams Howard Dean over Roy Neel:

There has always been a disconnect in the Dean campaign between the man and the movement. If two years ago someone cooked up the idea to create a progressive, reform-minded grassroots crusade that would focus on harnessing “people power” to confront Washington’s money-and-power culture and a leader for such an effort was needed, Dean’s name would not have jumped to mind. Senator Paul Wellstone maybe, not Dean. Yet thousands of Americans were yearning for such an endeavor, and Dean found a way to tap into their desires. It was not the most natural or conventional of couplings, but it happened. And he was propelled to the front of the presidential pack.

Is Dean filing for divorce?

Maybe what we’re seeing here is the Kerry, Edwards, and Clark campaigns becoming more like Dean’s just at the point at which his is becoming more like theirs…

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A few last thoughts on the South Carolina Democratic Debate:

Sharpton is absolutely right to question why for the poor to die for their country abroad is an “honor,” but for the rich to pay taxes is a “burden,” and to call for a less regressive payroll tax.

I’m not sure what Dean was trying to pull off with his critique of Kerry’s failed healthcare bills – it felt overly self-conscious and affected, even grasping. Kerry wasn’t particularly smooth in responding, but came off better over all in that exchange.

I wish I could say that Lieberman’s touting welfare reform as the sort of “bipartisan accomplishment” he’d continue lost him my vote, but clearly he never had it in the first place. I do find it sad that the welfare system has been completely off the radar of these debates.

I was glad to see Kerry get called on what Brooks called the “inner Moynihan” of some of his ’90s rhetoric. He came off quite defensive responding to a statement of his on affirmative action, and preached fealty to the “mend it, don’t end it” stance multiple times without allaying any fears about what kind of mending he plans to do.

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Dean did an effective job making the case against the PATRIOT Act but framed in terms of stopping future assaults on civil liberties rather than calling to undo the recent ones. Why isn’t anyone calling Edwards on his role in drafting it?

Glad to see the way the rhetoric within the Democratic party has shifted over the past few years. Part of that, no doubt, is being out of power; part of that is the success of the “anti-globalization” movement in putting the issue, so to speak, on the map. For Dean to say that we’ve given global rights to corporations but not to workers is right on; to describe that as having done half the job but forgotten the other half smacks of a disingenuous attempt to reconcile his stance with his record.

Kucinich laid out the case for single-payer health insurance clearly and sharply (and effectively dismissed the idea that the Clintons had pursued such a plan), and Sharpton made the compelling moral argument for such a system. What’s most interesting to me about the other candidates’ alternatives is that none of them mounted an argument (true, they’re generally not very good ones) against such a system any stronger than Clark’s “Let’s fix the one we have.”

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Watching the Democratic Debate now. A couple thoughts so far:

Somewhat should ask Joe Lieberman what it means to be “strong on values.” Also, what it would mean to be weak on values, which of his competitors are weak on values, and whether the Bush administration could be characterized as “strong on values.”

Glad to see David Kay’s charges getting some play here, given the way they’ve been underplayed by the media – or arguably overshadowed by the primaries. Dean is right to point the finger at Cheney, and Kerry did a deft job of avoiding either disputing or echoing his charge. I’m not sure what Edwards has in mind when he calls for a comission organized not by Congress but by “us, the people,” although I’m all for it. Also, Edwards is in Congress too…

Sharpton has joined Kucinich in calling for everyone to stay in for a long race to mobilize all their constituencies. I think there’s a strong case for that. Also, he’s right to point out that unlike John Edwards’ dad, his couldn’t have gotten a job as a mill worker.

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It’s difficult to picture this being a good move for Howard Dean. Joe Trippi, by most accounts, deserves a great deal of the credit for infusing the Dean campaign with an organizing approach that the Democrats have largely forgotten over the past couple decades, and by all accounts was central to Dean’s tremendous rise over the past year. Replacing him with a Gore operative, further, risks the appearance or worse the reality of trying to reassure voters by embracing the establishment that’s disenfranchised so many of them from the process. When Gore endorsed Dean I argued that it demonstrated more about Gore and his recognition of the failures of his “lockbox” campaign than about Dean; it would be a shame if Dean plans to regain his lead by becoming Al Gore circa 2000. Or, for that matter, John Kerry circa 2003.

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This is good news for Kerry, of course, who goes into February 2 two for two. Also for Clark, who seized that third metaphorical ticket out of New Hampshire that pundits at least seem to think is important, and more importantly avoided that fifth-place standing that looked like a real possibility given reports about his machine on the ground. Good news also, I’d argue, for Dean, the only candidate to run in both Iowa and New Hampshire and rank higher this time, and faces two candidates sharing the top three with him in New Hampshire – Kerry and Clark – who are struggling for the same electable-veteran niche.

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Nathan Newman offers a good reason to like Kerry. Mickey Kaus offers several reasons not to. As I see it, Kerry’s greatest offense of the past months has been telling Eric Alterman in early December

Eric, if you truly believe that if I had been President, we would be at war in Iraq right now, then you shouldn’t vote for me

and then using the capture of Saddam Hussein to argue Howard Dean was weak for opposing the war.

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Timothy Noah argues that Howard Dean has nothing to apologize for. She’s right. Well, there’s plenty for him to apologize for – but getting worked up isn’t it. Was yelling in the way he did a poor tactical move in that it was inevitable to be interpreted by some not as a rallying cry he learned from the Farmworkers but as a the cry of blood-thirsty banshee? Sure. But the odds that you’ll turn on TV news and see Howard Dean yelling as supposed to the odds that the 30-second clip will be, say, George Bush flirting in the State of the Union with writing bigotry into the US Constitution are disgraceful. As Garance Franke-Rutka observes:

I — and others — could scarcely hear what Dean was saying on the stage from the press section in the back of the room because several thousand Deaniacs were making so much noise (Dean wasn’t the only one screaming) and the acoustics in the room weren’t very good. From inside the room, it seemed that he was feeding off the energy of a crowd that was cheering him on, and that they got louder and louder in concert with each other.

There’s a great deal going on in this country about which we should be hollering bloody murder right now, and the more time spent fixating on whether getting worked up is “presidential,” the farther we are from doing something about it. As Russ Baker writes:

Basically, at a pep rally, he yelled like a football coach. This is described as being “unpresidential.” But says who? Besides, what’s the definition of ‘presidential?’ Isn’t giving insulting nicknames to world leaders unpresidential? Isn’t sending hundreds of American soldiers to die for uncertain and misrepresented ends in Iraq unpresidential – or worth considering as such? Isn’t having an incredibly poor grasp of essential world facts and an aversion to detail and active decision-making unpresidential?