Cups of specially spiced Kool Aid seemed out in force yesterday as the Democratic National Committee in effect gave DNC Chair Howard Dean an enthusiastic go ahead to continue making comments that suck up the media air and focus attention on one main feature of today’s Democratic party: Howard Dean’s comments as party chair.
This has long-term implications. Dean is a fascinating, often-peppery speaker who can always get his message across since reporters scurry to cover his every word — anticipating a political train wreck.
Aside from that, in the last election George Bush won by getting huge chunks of votes from all kinds of Republicans, plus some independents and centrists. Can Dean help build bridges to start siphoning off some libertarian GOPers, independents and centrists who didn’t trust John Kerry?
It’s hard to believe he can if you read the account of Saturday’s meeting and where many on the DNC are now politically coming from:
Democratic National Committee leaders embraced feisty party boss Howard Dean on Saturday and urged him to keep fighting despite a flap over his blunt comments on Republicans.
After a meeting of the DNC’s 40-member executive committee at a downtown hotel, members said Dean was doing exactly what they elected him to do — build the party in all states and aggressively challenge Republicans.
“I hope Governor Dean will remember that he didn’t get elected to be a wimp,” said DNC member Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a South Carolina state representative. “We have been waiting a long time for someone to stand up for Democrats.”
That’s an interesting comment. It certainly didn’t seem at the time that former DNC Chair Ron Brown, former President Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Terry McAuliffe just sat back and took everything the GOP and its associates (including talk show hosts) dished out.
What seems to be happening, couched amid talk that Dean is appealing more to Democrats locally, is that he is a big hit with Democratic leaders who feel the Democrats haven’t answered strongly enough and have been in effect bullied by Republicans.
This long held feeling by Democrats abated during Bill Clinton’s first election campaign with the creation of the perpetual “war room” that immediately responded to GOP attacks and launched attacks of its own. Many Democrats feel the Kerry campaign led by Bob Shrum forgot the lessons Democrats learned in the first George Bush’s campaigns — lessons that led to the creation of the “war room.”
The question is how Dean’s now-endorsed style plays in winning over people the Democrats must have to win elections. His fiery comments great coverage in the press because they’re fiery and provoke a predictable, equally fiery Republican response. This point-counter-point-political anger story is always a well-read and well-viewed story and one of any news outlet’s favorite.
But the larger question seems to have been ignored by the DNC officials: is this kind of thing needed to peel off GOP, independent and centrist voters upset at the direction the GOP is taking in terms of alliances with social conservatives, actions that smack of bigger government? Kerry’s problem wasn’t that he didn’t get enough Democratic partisans to vote. It’s that he didn’t get enough wavering GOPers, independents and centrists to go with him.
Dean told the crowd:””People want us to fight,” Dean told the national party’s executive committee. “We are here to fight…We need to be blunt and clear about the things we’re going to fight for. I’m tired of lying down in front of the Republican machine. We need to stand up for what we believe in.”
Dean’s problem, however, isn’t the fact that he is responding. It’s the words he is choosing to use to respond — words that do not seem suited to build the kinds of bridges he needs to expand the Democratic party’s votes.
So far he has couched criticism that’s legitimate in politics in a style akin to a candidate running in a presidential primary. And the rule of primaries is, the candidates tend to run more to the extremes, then run more to the center in the general election. Dean is still preaching to his party’s faithful — being their voice against an effective GOP attack and message machine. But that isn’t the same as expanding a party’s base.
The priority should be getting more voters away from the GOP but if the Reuters story is any indication, that isn’t the priority. Just look at these comments from interviews. Note the DNC officials’ overriding priority:
“Howard Dean is going to be much more aggressive, much more outspoken and much more of a risk-taker outside the Beltway than any chairman has been. We knew that,” said Alvaro Cifuentes, chairman of the DNC Hispanic caucus.
“We have to get our politics out of Washington. We cannot continue to be held captive by party leaders who I respect but who have to play their own local politics,” Cifuentes said, calling congressional Democrats “timid” and the flap over his comments “mostly a Beltway play.”
And:
Karen Marchioro, a DNC member from Washington state, said she was stunned to see so many congressional Democrats back away from Dean.
“We always defend them, why won’t they defend us? And they want us to support them for president?” she asked. “I have no desire to lose, I just think this is the way you win — you let people know where you stand and you fight.”
Note to Ms. Marchioro: Congressional Democrats know they need more than partisan Democrats to win. And:
Cobb-Hunter said Dean “should consider the source — congressional Democrats. What’s their track record? He’s doing what a lot of us wanted him to do and expected him to do.”
So Congressional Democrats have done nothing and don’t know anything about politics.
And Governor Dean does.
What flavor Kool Aid did they serve?
UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times has a stinging editorial (most likely written by Michael Kinsely, one of the most independent thinking pundits around) on Dean that’s yet another sign of how he is turning attention on himself rather than on his party’s strengths and the GOP’s weaknesses. Some key parts:
Howard Dean has become the Russell Crowe of the Democratic Party. But unlike Crowe, who has been profusely apologizing for beaning a hotel concierge with a telephone in a fit of bad temper, Dean shows no signs of contrition for the intemperate rhetorical blasts that he sent flying in the direction of the GOP last week.
Dean presents a conundrum for embattled Democrats, who have lost control of the White House and Congress. There are two ways for them to think about him. One is that he’s a reckless, emotional politician whose fiery remarks will stir up debate and help the Democratic Party. The other is that he’s a reckless, emotional politician whose name-calling cheapens the national debate on issues and hurts his own party.
More responsible Democrats may squirm over the party chairman’s unbridled, unscripted and unnecessary remarks, but they do have one benefit: Dean’s antics make other leading Democrats seem moderate by comparison.
After some analysis the editorial concludes:
So far, Dean has done a good job of pulling the party together– the Republican Party. His counterproductive message is a problem for the Democratic Party. And the fact that the opposition party is in too much disarray to seriously engage the issues is a problem for our democracy. We’d be equally concerned if it were the Republicans who’d turned to their own version of a Howard Dean for leadership.
UPDATE II: Those who support Dean’s approach have started a Howard Dean Speaks For Me online petition which you can find here.
UPDATE III: Dick Cheney has taken the political ball thrown into the arms of the GOP and is running with it. In a news report giving excerpts of an exclusive interview to be aired Monday on (where else?) Fox News’ Hannity and Colmes, Cheney says:
Howard Dean is “over the top,” Vice President Dick Cheney says, calling the Democrats’ chairman “not the kind of individual you want to have representing your political party.”
“I’ve never been able to understand his appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I’ve never met anybody who does. He’s never won anything, as best I can tell,” Cheney said in an interview to be aired Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes.”
“So far, I think he’s probably helped us more than he has them,” Cheney said in the interview taped Friday. “That’s not the kind of individual you want to have representing your political party.
The vice president added: “I really think Howard Dean’s over the top. And more important … I think many of his fellow Democrats feel the same way.”
NOTE: This could backfire and cause Democrats who don’t like Dean to rally around him. But is THAT the point of what the Democrats need to do now? Once again: Dean is proving to be distraction for the party’s task on hand, getting cheers from partisans but becoming the issue himself. All of which sucks away air time and newspaper/magazine space from articles about the problems of the Bush administration. In strategical terms, this makes us wonder: is Bob Shrum directing the party again?
MORE ARTICLES ON THIS SUBJECT:
—Howard –Dean Is Just Being Howard Dean
—Dean Not Toning Down His Republican Bashing
—Houston Chronicle column:DEAREST HOWARD DEAN Please note, your wild rhetoric is not helping P.S.: You should give some thought to resigning now
—Miami Herald: PERSPECTIVES ON HOWARD DEAN’S REMARKS ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
A CROSS SECTION OF BLOG OPINION ON DEAN:
—Daily Kos:”This is an “insider” versus “outsider” thing — a battle being played on many fronts. Incidentally, Dean has been raising money for state parties all year, numbers that aren’t included in his record fundraising numbers for the DNC itself. Has anyone compiled those numbers?”
—Jeff Jarvis:”When he got the job, I said that Howard Dean could resist himself. He hasn’t gone to anger-management class….No, Howard, that’s what lost you the primaries. Both sides are role-playing into each others’ hands. Dean is acting like the rabid underdog and the Republicans are acting like cornered kitties and both are ridiculous.”
—Pejmanesque:”It is over a year before the 2006 elections and if a week is a long time in politics, imagine how long a year is. But if Democrats want to buy into the illusion that all is nice and rosy in their camp, they are sowing the seeds of their own electoral destruction. The voters in 2004 informed Democrats in no uncertain term that blinding fury towards the Republicans was not enough to get them elected. They may very well be more than happy to repeat the message in 2006.”
—Oliver Willis (rightly) points out that Mr. Cheney has HIMSELF at times been…ahem…”over the top” and gives us a few specific uncensored examples.
—Centerfield’s Rick Heller has a good, serious post on this subject. He doesn’t like our Kool Aid analogy (well, we WILL consider changing it to “prune juice”). READ IT IN FULL. But a small taste. He outlines the three groups that the Demmies need to get new voters. The third group is composed of people who’ve voted Republican:
But I know the people in the 3rd group, as I have been one of them. For them, Dean’s punches seem wild and miss their target. The way Dean disses Republicans makes me sorry for the Republicans. I react by thinking “they’re not that bad” instead of thinking “those damn Republicans are at it again.”
When I saw Dean during the debates last year, I was positively impressed by him. It seems that when he is in a mixed audience, he properly modulates his rhetoric for the audience. But when he is among his supporters, he makes statements to charge up the crowd, as if his words would never leave the room and be heard by a larger audience. This is a failure in media strategy.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.