Dean says DNC no longer about just electing president. No longer just counting on swing states.

[madfloridian]

There is an interesting article in the Guardian UK about the fact that the convention will define in part the strategy that both Howard Dean and Barack Obama embrace to rebuild in all 50 states, about considering down ticket races as vital as the presidency. A lot of analyzing by Michael Tomasky, but fair and most interesting.

Convention puts Dean's revolutionary credentials to the test

In his three and a half years on the job, Dean has dramatically departed from the traditional role of a US party chairman. Despite the lofty title, historically the chairman has been a glorified bursar. Their job has been to raise money, placate the donors and otherwise keep a low profile. But Dean has done it differently. He has been a mediocre fundraiser. What he has tried to do instead is transform the thinking inside the party. And he's done better at that than many sceptics would ever have thought.

..."He was a moderate and even penny-pinching governor, not considered a liberal at all. But as he watched the country's radical swing to the right under George Bush, he inched left.

.."the party chairman is chosen by national committee members - party activists spread across the country. These people, livid at their leadership for blowing another election with their pusillanimity and caution, loved Dean's in-your-face, partisan style. In February 2005, they made him chairman.

Tomasky discusses the issue of the Hillary supporters who do not believe that Dean handled the primaries fairly...and he throws cold water on their arguments.

Not everyone is a believer. There is a certain family, rather prominent in Democratic politics, that is known never to have liked Dean. The female head of that household has millions of passionate followers, and many of them think Howard Dean rigged the primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. They point especially to hotly disputed votes from Florida and Michigan, states Clinton won but which saw their vote allocation cut in half by an official party committee because they violated party rules about when to hold their primaries.

The charge doesn't hold water - party chairmen used to dictate outcomes like that in the era of the smoke-filled room, but those days are gone. Still, some Clintonistas thumb their collective nose at pleas for unity, calling themselves Pumas (party unity, my ass), and 18-25% of them, according to polls, say they're voting for John McCain. Dean insists he has worked assiduously to appease them. "I truly believe that we are much more unified than the media is writing about because of their tendency to focus on the nail that sticks up rather than what's really going on," he said.

Yes, Tomasky is right. I always said that Florida's behavior during the primary would have far-reaching effects. It most surely has.

Believe it or not the Washington Times had a pretty fair article this week about Dean's goals for the party.

Dean strategy converting skeptics



UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS Democratic National Committee
Chairman Howard Dean greets DNC employees in the District last week during his Register for Change bus tour across the country.

"The days of the Democratic Party not showing up in half the states are over. When Democrats show up, talk about our values, how we will create jobs and provide health care, we can win in any part of the country," Mr. Dean told The Washington Times.

"We proved that in states like Mississippi, Indiana and Colorado, and we'll do it again in November when we elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States," he said.

...."However, perhaps nowhere has Mr. Dean's long-term strategy produced more stunning results than in Indiana, a historically solid Republican state that Democrats have carried just twice since 1936. Democrats have since picked up three congressional seats, and Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama is in a dead heat with Republican rival Sen. John McCain. Dean established the campaign strategy that the Democratic Party had to compete in all 50 states and invest in all 50 states in terms of establishing an infrastructure at the grass roots by putting additional staff into the states and having them stick around after the election was over," said Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker.

"If you look at Indiana as a case in point, we really never, ever received help from the DNC, but we did in 2005, 2006 and 2007," he said. "We received three full-time employees that pushed our total to eight, and we won three House seats and are now a target of Sen. Obama's campaign. We've opened up close to 20 campaign offices for Obama, working with the DNC."

Mr. Parker said that in hindsight, the 50-state strategy was "the crowning achievement of Dean's term, because prior to him, the DNC invested only in those states that were considered 'the battlegrounds.' We're now one of those battlegrounds."

Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Patricia Waak also had some good words for the DNC's rebuilding. She said ""It enhanced our ability to take over the state politically. The DNC came in and enhanced our voter file, helping us to mobilize people throughout the state. The result is we elected a governor, a state treasurer, (won) another House seat and added four state Senate seats and four state House seats."

I am glad to see both Obama and Dean emphasize these two things.

1. That the previous practice of the DNC focusing only on electing a president was flawed. The party needed rebuilding at grassroots level as well.

2. That the previous practice of electing a president such as counting on a handful of "swing states," such as Ohio, Florida and Michigan, not worrying about states that were already Democratic, such as New York, and writing off all the Republican states.....was a very flawed process.

Vindication for instigating changes that go to the heart of the party comes slowly. That vindication takes a while.