Thoughts on Dean, a response to a party county chairman

[jswordy]

I was asked yesterday in an email by my county chair whether I thought the DNC chairmanship is "the right spot" for Howard Dean. After re-reading today what I wrote back, I thought I'd share it. It is hoghly likely that at least some of you will disagree with some things written here, but I think we can all find common ground in the bedrock Democratic values I listed.

I would personally rather Dean had run for president. Frankly, had the Kerry folks not run an efficient backroom fax smear campaign, and had the Clintons not gotten Wes Clark in the race to dilute Dean's anti-war primary support base, he would be president right now. Karl Rove said they could beat Dean easily. But Karl Rove is also a student of "Brer Rabbit."

Dean will make us all proud as chairman. He is NOT the man he has been demonized as in the media. He has been working his tail off networking to make sure he draws the party together, but also to open up the process to more than just the Democratic elite who have been so efficient at missing the mark and racking up losses. He is firm in establishing a Democratic "farm team" of politicians elected at state and local levels from which
the party can draw folks who are promising up to the national level. That will be a generational kind of change. And he is brilliant.

One of Howard Dean's first actions as chair will be to make a Southern swing. He will be in Mississippi on March 1, where Kerry lost by just 20 percent (small margin for the South). I am trying to get his itinerary to see if I can go see him. I saw him here in Huntsville (Alabama) during the primaries. He really does mean what he says about running in the whole country.

I'm pretty disgusted with our party right now, even more so by the blatent effort of the Clintons and Kennedys and the party elite in trying to force Roemer into the chairman's spot.

The Democratic Party has a lot to prove to me right now. The party is in danger of losing a lot of its core supporters in its misguided rush to the right and its zeal to set aside women's reproductive rights, support for the social safety net and support for workers' rights. Those core supporters who leave will be added to those who were weaker and already have left.

Howard Dean is a step in the right direction. They say you can tell the strength of a man by measuring that of his enemies. Howard Dean is a giant.

We need to stand up for the things we believe in as Democrats. We need to cease trying to pander and coerce our way into high office. We need to tell the people who we are and what we stand for again, those same values that have run through our party for more than 70 years. We stand up for them! That's bedrock.

The right to a decent wage; women's equal rights; the right to stand equally regardless of race; the right to healthcare; the right to a decent retirement; the right of our children to be free from the burden of the national debts of their elders; the right of redress in our courts for wrongs done to us; the right of privacy in our bedrooms, on our telephones, in our emails and in our homes; the right of a publicly known due process of law, not of secret courts and tribunals; the basic right to an attorney, regardless of the charge against us -- all these and many other of our rights have been, or are in danger of being, taken from us by
the right.

Those rights are endangered due to a basic failing of the Democratic Party to communicate to the electorate its values, a willingness of the party to allow itself instead to be defined and pigeonholed by the opposition, a reticence of the party leadership elite to move from their positions of lofty and cushy privilege for the benefit of the party. Thus, a disconnection of the party from the people. So the Democrats bear responsibility themselves for any of the dimunitions of rights possible
under this Republican government.

Well, now the grassroots rabble are at the door. We want our party back.

I am ready to work 110 percent for this party. I have been trying and trying to plug myself in farther to it, with little success so far. I want to work for a state campaign.

But I won't work for the party if I have to sell out my own basic values and beliefs like I did last time to work for John Kerry. Not anymore. No more party hacks! Give me some candidates who will represent our party's best, and I will work my heart out for them.

We Democrats need to stop cringing every time we see our own shadows, and Howard Dean is a first step to that end.