Dean

[telkanuru]

So, there's been some talk about the Dean bid for the Democratic Party Chair being the death of the party and whatnot. What do you all think?

My opinion is now the democratic party will stand for something. If you follow the example of the rebirth of the republicans, you need to stand for something and attract the people to you rather than to try to attract yourself to the people, and Dean in a leadership position will do that.

[jeff]

"Republican Lite" aint gonna work. I don't know if Dean is the right guy (get used to the primal scream clip being shown a lot more times), but a watered down version of Republicanism isn't it. To put it in market-speak, they have to figure out and articulate what their "differentiating points" and "value add" are.

[Soldier]

The current dean is a woman...she'd have to retire first, but she's pretty cool - I think she could make a good president. Plus, she went to high school with Dad...

No, wait, you don't mean that dean, do you?

[Inquartata]

The head of the DNC has to be a strategist for the Party. Dean did not do such a great job of that for his own campaign. I'm skeptical that he can project his own appeal to youth and the antiwar camp onto elderly Democrat candidates who were lukewarm opponents or even supporters of the war. I'm also skeptical that he can do for the Party as a whole what he did for himself with regard to fundraising. But who knows? It wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.

[mrbiggs]

I don't know much about Dean's policies, but from what I hear he's a pretty good guy, so this sounds like a good idea.

I DON'T want him to be President, for the simple reason that he says too many stupid things. Just in the early race for President, he:

1. Made the comment that people with "confederate flags on their pickup trucks" should vote for him, thus exposing him to accusations of racism and stuff.

2. That speech. You know. The one where he killed his last chance.

It's not that these two things were necessarily that bad to say. It's just that it shows that he sometimes screws up and says the wrong thing. And when he's trying to do something like make peace in the Middle East, the wrong thing said could be very, very bad.

[darius]

I've heard that the primary role of the *NC chair is fundraising. And Dean was excellent at that, especially turning out the grassroots. What remains to be seen is if he can get the big donors to empty their wallets.

The GOP has willing mouthpieces in FOX and AM radio who will parrot their talking points ad nauseum. The Democrats really need to provide their own partisan avenues to compete.

The media has done a pretty big hatchet job on Dean. Despite being extremely anti-war, his record as Vermont governor is pretty moderate, yet he's trotted out as an extreme leftist. Yay for the sound-bite mentality.

Personally, I think Dean's better there than in a presidential race. As much as you hate to worry about "electability", Karl Rove was salivating over a Dean nomination.

darius

[Larrison]

I have to confess, that of all the Democratic candidates for President, I liked Dean the best. Not that I agreed with him on some things, but he at least laid it out and took a position -- not like the focus-group led "I can be an antiwar war hero" candidate the DNC finally put up.

Now, as head of the DNC I'd say Dean has three big jobs. First, he needs to pull together the Democratic Party and structure up some overall philosophy that looks like it can be a winner against the Republicans. With the current splintering of the party post-election into the flamers who went as far as suggesting that the Blue states secede from the Union, to the moderate Democrats who were not energized in the last election -- that's going to be a big job and absolutely necessary to accomplish to win back Congress and the White House. Having a party that stands for "We're against Bush!" isn't a winning philosophy.

Secondly, he's going to have to put the party structure back together from the grassroots up, and revitalize it. From everything I've read about the last election, the Democrats lost key states like Ohio and Florida because they were just outworked at the local and state levels. This isn't exciting, ideological politics, but the grunt work of registering voters, getting voters out on election day, and coordinating activities so that on election day you get more Democratic voters to go to the polls than the Republicans do.

Thirdly, he's going to have to work on a new Democratic "Image" for the next 2 elections, and get buy into this from the re-integrated party factions, and then communicate this to the energized party structure so they can get the "image" message out and keep doing that. I don't think the Democratic party has covered themselves with glory in the last couple of elections (neither have the Republicans either)

Can Dean do this? I think so -- he did a good job of organizing for the primaries, and had the most consistent philosophy of all the Democratic nominees. He was very good at organizing the new media (such as the Internet) in getting out his voter campaigns and in fundraising.

Can he translate this into a new, revitalized local and state party structure and orchestrate that for the next couple of elections? Perhaps..

Can he pull together a popular consensus that resonates with the electorate as a whole? Perhaps -- Dean had a bit of the evangelist to him, but putting together a consensus means that you have to rein that in to get everyone's opinions and positions included, not just espouse your own.