We Love You, Howard Dean, And Always Will

Howard Dean taught us modern campaigning. He pioneered social media outreach and fundraising. As chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009, he preached and enacted the "50-state strategy," an effort to put staff and resources into every state to bolster the grassroots. Which worked. Which lives on today in North Carolina as "a candidate in every single House and Senate district" -- all 120 House seats and 50 Senate seats, contested -- no matter how improbable the prospects, and the literally hundreds of new candidates in every state that are running strong right now, with clear positive platforms, and who owe absolutely nothing to the political establishment.

When he led the Democrats, he encouraged county parties to return to retail politics, one-on-one voter outreach, and he taught everyone the importance of social media for fundraising and for message propagation -- where boomlets happen like lightning. Howard Dean was leading the DNC when Watauga Democrats flipped the county commission from red to blue in 2006, and Cullie Tarleton and Steve Goss won House and Senate seats. We learned so much.

Dean's tenure at the DNC coincided with Jerry Meek's chairmanship of the NC Democratic Party, a renaissance of grassroots activism and retail politics. Jerry Meek came to Watauga and participated in the biggest ever "kickoff canvass" in 2006. Unfortunately, Jerry Meek passed the torch after two terms, and we didn't hardly see his like again, until recently.

Howard Dean made the right kind of enemy. Rahm Emanuel hated his guts. Emanuel favored a different political model that ignored some states -- actually, many -- and poured all the money into boosting the presidential candidate rather than building local parties. Emanuel got rid of Dean as soon as Obama became president. Senator Chuck Schumer participated in that purge. He didn't like Howard Dean either. As far as I'm concerned, Rahm Emanuel was everything that was wrong with Barack Obama's first term, and Chuck Schumer is everything that's wrong with sucking up to money-pimping Democratic donors today, particularly the ones with Wall Street addresses.

Howard stirred excitement among punked-out Democrats and bored independent voters during his presidential run in 2004. It was such excitement. If you were a part of it, you remember it. I see the same vibration around many new Democratic candidates this year. They're rewriting the Party and rewiring the Party brain, just like Howard Dean did.

Best News of the Day

Howard Dean: "I'm Running for DNC Chair"

 Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said he is running for his old job atop the Democratic Party.

"The dems need organization and focus on the young," Dean tweeted Thursday. "Need a fifty State strategy and tech rehab. I am in for chairman again."

 Dean served as Democratic National Committee chairman from 2005 to 2009....

For those who don't remember, Howard Dean presided over a revitalized Democratic National Committee through the 2006 General Elections, when incidentally Democrats won every race in Watauga, from County Commission to NC House and Senate seats, and through the surge of 2008 when Barack Obama won the presidency and the Watauga GOP didn't even field a single candidate for County Commission.

Come back to the raft, Howard honey! We're waiting for you!

The Return of MeanDean

NOTED, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT No Sunday Morning GasBag Show thought Bernie Sanders particularly worthy of interview. However, Howard Dean, who has been noticeably quiet on the issue of the Obama tax deal, did come out today on Face the Nation. Excerpts via Sam Stein are copied below (full transcript will be available on the CBS website eventually).

Incidental Footnote Seeing the Big Dog standing there Friday on an emergency mission for the President, did not necessarily increase the president's stature nor persuasiveness. The appearance in fact threw the president's deficiencies under a brighter light.

Additional Footnote "The AARP thinks it's okay" (last graph below). The AARP just incidentally thought the Medicare drug add-on back in 2003 was just fine too. And so much for their concept of "deficit."

Howard Dean:

"This is a short-term Washington fix. It does nothing about this biggest long-term threat to America, which is the deficit. I don't hear Republicans or Democrats talking about the deficit. There is no pain in this agreement. This is the easy way out for everybody, much as everybody is complaining, hooting and hollering, this is an inside-the-Beltway fuss, and somebody needs to do something about the long-term problems to this country. It is not in this bill....

"The thing that bothers me about it is, we have yet to deal with the biggest problem that is facing this country, which is the size of the deficit, and nobody is doing anything about it.

"It is easy to promise everybody tax cuts all the time. You have got to make some cuts if you are going to do that....

"What piqued Dean in particular, however, was a provision in the 'framework' that provides a one-year, two-percent payroll tax holiday that, critics say, could end up siphoning money from the Social Security Trust Fund. The nation's largest senior-issues lobbying organization, the AARP, said it was comfortable with the provision -- confident that it won't be extended down the road."

Howard Dean Supports the Opt-Out

He sees the opt-out compromise as a pragmatic step for getting a public option.

The opt-out is being heatedly dismissed on the left, but we implicitly trust Dr. MeanDean, especially on health-care reform.

Given a strong public option in a national health insurance reform, we would bet that many of our more Republican states would allow their political leaders to huff and puff about how awful it all was while conveniently forgetting to opt out ... sort of the way they publicly eschewed the stimulus money but took it anyway.

And those red state legislators who do opt out will be exposed to their constituents as caring much more about insurance industry profits than their citizens.

We Stand With Dean

Former Gov. Dean calls public option indispensable.

But apparently the Republicans are still running the government.

Is Rahm Emanuel Really That Petty?

Politico is reporting that the Obama team dissed Howard Dean by deliberately staging the transfer of power at the Democratic National Committee while Doctor Dean was 7,000 miles away, where he was actually doing his job. Apparently, there'll be no acknowledgment of Dean's 50-state strategy as the proximate cause of the Obama victory ... let alone no high-profile job for Dean in the Obama administration.

Joe Trippi, who was Dean's main man in the primary campaign of 2004, says it's all Rahm Emanuel's doing.

The prick.

'Emanuel' Means 'God With Us'

I can applaud the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as the President-elect's chief of staff because it's evidence of Obama's executive skill. You get the meanest sumbitch you know to make sure the trains run on time. It's not that you necessarily WANT the meanest sumbitch (that's just icing on the cake, far as I'm concerned); it's because Emanuel has a proven track record of getting stuff done.

But we haven't forgotten how wrong Rahm Emanuel was back in the spring of 2006 when he got into a shouting match with Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean over how best to run the fall races that year. The meanest sumbitch in the Democratic Congressional caucus met his match in Howard Dean, who had taken over the DNC in 2005 with the express intention of launching a 50-state strategy.

Dean was right. Emanuel was wrong. Dean, in fact, deserves no small credit for what just happened last Tuesday. Without Howard Dean's change of direction from the Clinton-era tactic of triangulation and targeted spending (a.k.a., giving up on over half the land-mass of North America), Barack Obama would never have won North Carolina. Nor probably Virginia. Nor Indiana. I won't go on, though I could.

We have no quarrel with Emanuel's hard-nosed effectiveness and don't even blame him for flaming out with Dean over a difference of opinion. We're just glad he's going to be in the White House to take orders from Obama. Someone said on TV last night that Obama seems to be a "born executive leader," and having a dependable hit-man is what every born executive needs for Christmas.

Howard Dean's 50-State Strategy Finds a Champion

ALL 50 states, goldarn it! Starting with North Carolina tomorrow.

This we like!