Great interview with Howard Dean, including why he won't do an encore (unless....)

[DFW]

He didn't completely close the door on returning as DNC chair, but in all likelihood it won't happen unless we lose the White House in 2016, and THAT is too ugly for me to contemplate. It's an honest "how I did it," along with how a party atrophies once they get the White House:

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/25/people_yelled_and_carried_on_howard_dean_on_how_he_remade_the_dnc_and_dems_new_path_forward/

[msongs]

1. thanks for the good read about our Howard nt

[DFW]

5. He's still the man

There was a long TV interview with him recently, and he was asked if he thought he could do the job of President. He said of course he could have done it. The fact that he didn't know how to run a presidential campaign had nothing to do with his governing ability. I agree, and I do NOT think he would have made the mistake of having a biased crony like Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff. Howard would have gone for measured competence, as I like to think Obama wanted to, but got swayed by his personal loyalty to Rahm--a national tragedy, as it turned out. Excluding Howard from his administration was one of the WORST mistakes Obama has made in all his time as president, IMHO. Competence in the cabinet and expert political advice, too. What was not to like?

[rurallib]

2. Quite interesting - sadly it looks like

Republicans learned more from him than we did.

[stevenleser]

3. Some real gems in there: "I was a centrist governor" and also bragging about getting Begich elected

In other words, Dean is/was a pragmatist, as most successful politicians are.

"My experience as a governor was that the state party was weak. They were also kind of a pain in the neck. I was a centrist governor, and they were always complaining about things that I was doing, and I was very annoyed by it. "

and

"So the origin of the 50-state strategy was to be prepared to go anywhere. The idea was, if you ever wanted a Mark Begich, you had to invest in Alaska before a Mark Begich came on the horizon so you could be ready. Mark Begich is the example that I use. Nobody expected Ted Stevens to be indicted, but when he was, we were ready. So the origin was to invest in the party throughout the country. "

I love it!!!

On Edit: OMG, and this!!!!:

What do you say to those who argued that the 50-state strategy for Democrats, it brought in a lot of Democrats who were right for those particular regions, but it may have diverged sharply from the mainstream Democratic message? Was that a problem?

There was some discussion about that, and actually that happened. We ended up with some conservative Democrats from Western Pennsylvania, for example. But my point was, you can be a small regional minority party if you want to, and stay ideologically pure. But it’s more fun to have the speaker. I’d rather have inter-party fights in the majority than stay pure in the minority. So we wanted to keep a majority. And the Republicans have actually done this too. Now they did it through gerrymandering, but still. And also the Republicans have better messaging, that’s a whole other story.

[freshwest]

7. ...

[Jamaal510]

4. K&R

[Hekate]

6. KnR