Howard Dean: The Wrong Man In The Wrong Job At The Wrong Time?

When Howard Dean was in the running for Democratic party chairman many moderates and even some liberals said he would be the wrong face and voice for the party — mainly because they felt he had — to be blunt — a big mouth. They warned he’d be a great choice to fire up already-convinced partisans but a lousy choice to expand the party’s base.

And now, it seems, there are several signs that some Democrats believe their worst fears about Dean are coming true as he makes statements shoving the spotlight away from a Democratic agenda and putting it on his comments….and his mouth:

Democrats Joseph Biden and John Edwards are criticizing party chairman Howard Dean, saying his rhetorical attacks on Republicans have gone too far.

Dean has said Republicans never made an honest living in their lives and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay ought to go back to Houston where he can serve his jail sentence. DeLay has not been accused of any crime.

Note to Dean: details truly do matter. As party chairman your every word will be (and is) examined and replayed on talk radio. MORE:

Dean “doesn’t speak for me with that kind of rhetoric and I don’t think he speaks for the majority of Democrats,” Biden, the top mocrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

While discussing the hardship of working Americans standing in long lines to vote, Dean said Thursday, “Republicans, I guess, can do that because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives.” Dean said later his comments did not refer to hard-working Americans, but rather to the failure of Republican leadership to address working-class concerns.

Responding to Dean’s initial remark, Edwards said Dean “is not the spokesman for the party.”

Dean is “a voice. I don’t agree with it,” Edwards, a former senator and the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2004, said Saturday at a party fundraising dinner in Nashville, Tenn.

Not a good sign. If Biden and Edwards fleed anymore they’d be dogs.

Of course, the Democratic party issued a pro formal spin statement defending Dean and minimizing the strident nature of his comments. But there is MORE than just one comment. Just LOOK at what we’ve seen the past few weeks:

• Reports that the Democrats are shockingly behind the Republicans in fund-raising. Partisans may dismiss this as because the GOP is in power and corporate moneybags want to give big bucks to those they think can help them and will remain in power. Even so, the bottom line is: the money isn’t happening under Dean.
• The comments above by Edwards and Biden. These comments indicate some Democratic politicos feel they must not just put discrete distance between themselves and Dean, but basically denounce him in order not to be impacted and tarnished by his comments.
• The concerned and angry comments of increasingly popular liberal talk show host Ed Schultz about the party’s financial plight under Dean plus his personal ire over problems getting Dean to respond to him and go on his show. Dean finally did but it wasn’t the kind of interview that made you think of more than one phrase as Dean talked: “This guy is spinning.” At one point Dean promised to get back Schultz on something….and Schultz never got a call back. No matter how Dean explains it, its poor management to let Schultz hang and simmer. He shouldn’t be alienating anyone, particularly those already on his side.

We know some Democrats (or Republicans) don’t like to hear it, but a party chairman must do more than just fire up the partisans and solidify votes a party already has. A party chairman has to be able to articulate the party’s positive and negative visions (both exist)l. He/she should also be able to work to steadily expand the party’s base — which in the case of a Democratic party chairman means working to peel off some votes from the center and even GOPers upset about the gradual social conservative takeover of their party. An effective party chairman also must be able to raise the all important money.

From most accounts Dean is doing well with the partisans — who most certainly will leave comments about this post claiming it is the handiwork of the GOP (we don’t belong to either party). But anyone who follows political science knows that an effective party chair has to be effective on several fronts or his party can suffer.

Having two highly prominent members of your party run away from you as if you had smallpox is not a sign that you’re on the right track.