Newsview: Dean Aims to Overhaul Democrats

[sabra]

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/1005/267005.html

Newsview: Dean Aims to Overhaul Democrats

Washington (AP) - Howard Dean is no longer screaming - he's scheming. The failed presidential candidate whose howling adieu to the Iowa caucuses helped seal his fate as a presidential candidate is plotting to overhaul the Democratic Party. Borrowing ideas from President Bush (website - news - bio) 's re-election campaign, Madison Avenue and his own Internet-driven White House bid, the Democratic National Committee chairman hopes to drag the party into the 21st century.

"What I'm trying to do is impose a system and run this place like a business," Dean said during an expansive interview in his office overlooking the Capitol.

That vision would be welcome news to party strategists who have complained that the DNC and its chairman of nine months lag behind Republicans in the political arts of messaging, targeting and organizing.

Some Democrats look back at Dean's rise-and-fall presidential campaign and wonder whether he has the management skills to carry out his plans or the ability to raise the money needed to pay for them.

[sasquatch]

1. Give'em hell Howard

[EST]

2. Dipsh*t frig**n slanted biased slime report.

[IndyOp]

20. How many times do we have to tell people Dean did NOT yell/

howl/scream? His mic was designed to pick up only sounds within a few inches of it - he did not know and he raised his voice to be heard over the adoring crowd.

They must all know that Dean did not scream - the fact that the piece opens this way is evidence of bias.

[Carolab]

55. I'll say. If I have to defend the "scream" one more time, I'LL scream.

Not only that, the PARTY sabotaged him, too.

[Me.]

3. Haven't We Had Enough Of Countries Being Run Like Businesses?

Am a Dean fan, but am sick of corporatized government. How about running a government like one but make it a good, well managed, functioning one that is accountable to the wishes of the citizens?

[OzarkDem]

7. The issues and policies haven't changed

Its how you put your message across to convince voters that has to change.

Maybe once Dems are back in power, they can change media ownership rules and return the Fairness Doctrine so candidates can get better media coverage. Until then, you win any way you can.

[K-W]

11. Until we change the laws, the dems have to play the game too.

And, really, personalizing thier message, and creating organizations to reach out to ordinary people is to some extent is making it more accountable to the wishes of the citizens.

[TomClash]

19. How about running it like the people's business? nt

[ananda]

24. Hear, hear!

I agree.

Screeeaaammmmm!!!!!

I'm so sick of corporatism and trying to make bureaucracies into corporate-like entities, including schools. Uggghhh.

Even in my school system, administrative flunkies are given corporate titles, like cfo or executive principal. And their only function is to figure out ways to justify their jobs... while teachers are given more and more work with less and less time to do it, while having to teach more classes with more students.

I hate the flunkie system, where students are treated like prisoners and teachers like slave cattle.

As for government, I feel as though the whole system is corporatized and we really have only one party: the business party.

Screeeaaammmm again!

Sue

[Me.]

25. All Good Points

Posts 7, 11, 19, & 24. Dean is a smart man and his heart and mind is in the right place as far as I'm concerned. My hope is that he's letting "them", those putting pressure on him like the DLC who wants him to be more corporation friendly, think he's paying attention, while actually putting a different governmental structure in place.

As for corporations, many of them, just like B***co, Enron & others seem doomed to fail. They seem incapable of being properly organized and I wonder if once the playing field is leveled, them actually paying taxes and losing their welfare checks, how many of them will survive. Some will without a doubt, but many won't.

Edited to add #7, which I meant to in the first place.

[JNelson6563]

28. There's a difference between the party and the government

FYI

[Me.]

29. There Used To Be

But Rove, B*** and all of his gang have changed that, which is how the Plame situation came into being.

[madfloridian]

31. Ok, so you don't want it run like a business?

I have noticed a trend here that nothing the DNC can do now is acceptable.

I guess that is how it will be.

Can you imagine the uproar if he said he was NOT going to run it as a business?

[Me.]

39. Not Really

Especially where the corporations and lobbyists hold sway. I can't get past B***, who is called the executive president, and came into office saying he was going to run it like a business. Listen, it may be semantics or terminology here. But business implies profits and highest bidder nonsense. As for Dean, I'm all for him, he is a bright light among st too few others. And I hope he helps bring sanity and true governance to we the people, a system of smarts combined with compassion that serves us all as well as looking out for our best interests.

[madfloridian]

42. They won't hold sway if he gets enough money from small donors.

Yet many are advocating holding back support until he succeeds. Go figure how that will work.

[napi21]

4. I think Dean is on the right track, but he's going to have his hands full

"trying to heard the cats"!

I've been listening to the cspan 36 hour call-in marathon today. It brought back a lot of memories, and one that clicked in my brain was the "Contract with America" of 1996.

We need something similar to that for the Dems. Obviously it needs a new name, but if Dean can guid the Dems to put together a real written plan, one they can all agree with, it would be a giant step for us.

I heard a rerun of some Pub from back in 1998, who said "how easy it was for the candidates, and even after they were all elected in 1996. All they had to do was reference the contract." It's a very good way to convince the public that they know what they want to do, and eliminate all the MSM's from saying the Dems have no plan!

I wish him luck, and I'll help him any way I can. It's going to be a real challenge!

[AX10]

21. Contract with America was in 1994.

We do need a similar theme.

[PDittie]

5. Who TF let this sentence be published?

The failed presidential candidate whose howling adieu to the Iowa caucuses helped seal his fate

Damned liberal media.

[OzarkDem]

6. Halleluja!

Dems problems aren't issues and policies - they're excellent in those areas with proven records of succes at the national level.

Their problem has been outdated management and campaigning that has let Republicans and the corporate news media define them wrongly to voters.

Dems need better voter education and better marketing strategies.

Take it from an old salesman - you can build a better mousetrap, but the world won't beat a path to your door if you don't know how to sell it.

Thank you Dr. Dean!

[meti57b]

8. How many loaded words can they get in one small paragraph ...

Washington (AP) - Howard Dean is no longer screaming - he's scheming. The failed presidential candidate whose howling adieu to the Iowa caucuses helped seal his fate as a presidential candidate is plotting to overhaul the Democratic Party. Borrowing ideas from President Bush (website - news - bio) 's re-election campaign, Madison Avenue and his own Internet-driven White House bid, the Democratic National Committee chairman hopes to drag the party into the 21st century.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

9. Wow! Quite a first paragraph!

Howard Dean is no longer screaming - he's scheming. The failed presidential candidate whose howling adieu to the Iowa caucuses helped seal his fate as a presidential candidate is plotting to overhaul the Democratic Party. Borrowing ideas from President Bush (website - news - bio) 's re-election campaign, Madison Avenue and his own Internet-driven White House bid, the Democratic National Committee chairman hopes to drag the party into the 21st century.

[madfloridian]

10. Typical Fournier

LOL

[nickgutierrez]

15. That damned liberal media!

[Robeson]

16. Yep. No agenda there.....

...just straight, unbiased journalism....

[Cha]

44. It reads like it could

have been written by the criminal rove, himself. Or fournier was trying to please his corporate Masters.

This is total bias..he could have reported the contents without all the obvious slime and snarkiness.

[e-mail]

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

54. Yes, he could have,

But then they would have killed him.

[madfloridian]

12. Newsview: Dean Aims to Overhaul Democrats

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/1005/267005.html

Washington (AP) - Howard Dean is no longer screaming - he's scheming. The failed presidential candidate whose howling adieu to the Iowa caucuses helped seal his fate as a presidential candidate is plotting to overhaul the Democratic Party. Borrowing ideas from President Bush (website - news - bio) 's re-election campaign, Madison Avenue and his own Internet-driven White House bid, the Democratic National Committee chairman hopes to drag the party into the 21st century.

"What I'm trying to do is impose a system and run this place like a business," Dean said during an expansive interview in his office overlooking the Capitol.

And they list the goals he setting out.

Among Dean's goals are:

_Making Democrats the party of values, community and reform. Armed with extensive DNC polling, Dean is consulting with party leaders in Congress, mayors and governors to recast the public's image of Democrats with a unified message.

_Improving the party's "micro-targeting," the tactic of merging political information about voters with their consumer habits to figure out how to appeal to them.

_Building a 50-state grass-roots organization, using the same Internet and community-building tools that took Dean's presidential bid from obscurity to the front of the pack before Iowa.

This is where Dean and Bush have something in common. Both their campaigns benefited from networks of supporters promoting their candidacies person to person - friends telling friends, family and associates how to vote.

Bush plugged into existing organizations such as churches and hunting clubs. Dean nurtured his word-of-mouth networks through the Internet.

"I tapped into a craving for community in a society where we're becoming increasingly isolated from ourselves," he said.

And the plan to use data-mining clusters.

The Bush campaign worked with consumer data-mining companies to place every battleground state voter into one of 20 to 30 "clusters" of like-minded people. The DNC's current system has eight to 16 clusters.

If the DNC can afford it, Dean's advisers hope to have 40 clusters in time for the next presidential race. This personalization of politics harkens to pre-TV days when ward bosses and precinct captains, acting largely on instinct, tailored campaign messages to their friends and neighbors.

[slor]

13. Good! I'm with DEAN!

That is all.

[nickgutierrez]

14. Looks like a solid plan

[AlGore-08.com]

23. The most interesting part of the article is the conflict between

"We need a unified message" and the creation of clusters of "like minded individuals" so that campaigns can be tailored to appeal to specific voter groups. This is the central conflict of the party, IMNSHO - - do we all have to agree on (GOP imposed) hot button issues like choice, gay rights, gun control, or can we agree to disagree on them? And if we do agree to disagree - - how do we explain that in a coherent way to non-Democrats?

The folks who want Dean (or grassroots oriented reform inside the Dem party) to fail will continue to play up that conflict.

[Zhade]

27. A very good question.

IMHO, there is no room inside the Big Tent for, say, anti-choicers (specifically, people who want more restrictions on a woman's right to choose - not talking about people who just don't like abortion), or those who favor corporate profits over workers' rights, or the Patriot Act over civil liberties, or illegal wars...

There are fundamental disconnects in the party, some of which are caused by people mistakenly believing they can be for controlling other people and be a Democrat.

I do not see a way to resolve those differences. When one part of the party works against things like civil rights and the welfare of the common citizen, there's a problem.

[acmavm]

17. Good for Howard. I hope he schemes up a way to make the current

bunch of corporate appeasers find their consciences and remember that they were elected to represent the people who make up the party, not to feather their own nests. And as for the writer of this article, he sounds like a bitter and whinny little speciman who's just upset because his party has been found to be a bunch of felonious assholes who only have bleeding this country dry as their number one agenda.

[dennis00]

18. Dean in Iowa

Once and for all. Dean did NOT shout or scream or howl in Iowa. No one who was there will tell you he did. What Happened? The scream, or whatever, was created on tape by sound engineers amplifying Dean shouting to be heard over the crowd noise, and turning down the volume of the crowd noise to make it sound like Dean lost control. The result of the sound engineering is Bush in the oval office. I refuse to call him the President. The White House is now the Out House.

[Cha]

46. So true...urban legend rides

again.

Welcome to DU, dennis..good to have you aboard.

[Peace Patriot]

22. The best thing he could do is work to rid us of secret, proprietary...

programming code in the new electronic voting systems, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations. No brainer.

[Zhade]

26. He actually said this?

"What I'm trying to do is impose a system and run this place like a business"

Is this an accurate quote?

What's democratic about a system being imposed on the party?

Can someone (preferably NOT a rabid Dean partisan, I don't listen to partisans) explain this? What am I missing?

[JNelson6563]

32. It's easy really

and I have applied this same theory to my conty party with great success. It could actually be translated to mean "the organization will be more assertively marketed and managed with better discpline".

I'm hard pressed to think of a less organized group than the Dems. I joined my local board, took over membership and started to apply some marketing efforts. I applied this sort of thing to various other efforts in the party too and things exploded. All are welcome to voice concerns, submit resolutions, whatever they want. This "discipline" doesn't apply to principles, just the actual running of the party. Marketing membership, publicizing events, sponsoring forums and rasing the money to do it all.

After just three years of this the difference is amazing. Like night and day and it's all for the better~~way more people are actively involved and we elect more Dems to office every year now.

Glad Dean has decided to follow my lead on this. haha

Julie

[Zhade]

36. Thank you for your explanation.

As long as input is still allowed, and considered, it sounds fine.

[madfloridian]

37. Input is allowed.

The folks there read the blog, and they read through the forums. They know what people are saying.

[JNelson6563]

53. We've tried to encourage it

Our monthly board meetings are open to all and we have quarterly general membership meetings too. The state party is proposing a rule change that would allow state party members of 30 days or more vote at convention. The current rule says only precinct delegates can now. My county is supporting this change for greater inclusion and, as District chair, I am lobbying our delegates to vote for it at state central.

(All this while applyling a business model to the nuts and bolts part of party building.)

Needless to say, we are getting some resistance to this "let's invite everyone to participate" business. Good thing there's more of us than there are them. heh



Julie

[Me.]

40. That's A Good Way Of Explaining It

"This "discipline" doesn't apply to principles, just the actual running of the party. Marketing membership, publicizing events, sponsoring forums and raising the money to do it all."

Thanks

[madfloridian]

34. Again I ask. Do you think it should not be run like business?

Do you not think there should be a system? What in the world is going on...Give us a plan...right now. No, that is not a good plan, do not run it like a business.

Read it again, it is a good solid plan. I am now waiting for PDA and other groups to start posting that there is nothing about Iraq in there. No, there isn't. That is the job of congress and those who voted for it.

[Me.]

45. No, Not As Business Is Known To Us

As I said before it may be a matter of semantics, and Post #32 explained it is a matter of structure and not principle. And perhaps what Dean is putting in place is a new paradigm. His history would certainly suggest he's capable of doing do. I would appreciate it if you can share the PDA, if possible.

And while the following quote by Jefferson doesn't apply to what Dean wants to do, it does apply to what we have seen for the last five years where business is king.

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Thomas Jefferson

[madfloridian]

47. Yes, it is about structure, but also about funding the party.

That is vital. Getting the money from us, smaller donors will eventually marginalize the hold the corporations have now.

He says if 2 million donate only 10 a month, that will be 20 million monthly operating costs.

Yet there are constant threads here advocating withholding funds until he fixes the party. Well, that sure makes sense. That is effectively turning it back to corporations.

[Me.]

49. Withholding Funds Won't Do Anyone Any Good

The source of those funds will be what makes the difference. A community of small donors can transform our world and liberate us from the corporate stranglehold. It also sends a message, which is very important especially to those in DC who think they are in charge of our party. Quite like those donations with 1 cent added that many of us sent in when Dean became DNC chair.

[madfloridian]

50. Exactly right.

[madfloridian]

30. Building it from a community, social base. Good idea.

Bush used the church community, Dean is trying to build as a socially interactive party from the ground up.

I actually like this:

"Dean is putting four or five DNC staff members in every state with orders to organize every precinct. One of the organizers' first mandates is to conduct four major events a year, one or two of which are mainly social.

Dean learned from his own campaign that it is critical to form relationships that turn into small communities and build into networks of people who feel part of a bottom-up operation with a purpose larger than themselves.

It's a long-term investment that runs counter to the political culture in Washington that, in the last years of the 20th century, has valued multimillion-dollar TV buys over grass-roots organizing.

"You've got to recruit people. You've got to ask them to do something," Dean said. "You have to treat them like a community."

Think about it, it's a good idea.

I notice people want a plan right now, but if the plan is not exactly what they want it is not good enough.

[Oakland]

33. Somebody with a brain

and a backbone has to step forward and lead. This group of Dems are one sorry bunch of eunuchs.

[sandnsea]

35. Party of Values, Community & Reform

That's the good stuff in here.

"The last time this party was branded was Lyndon Johnson," Dean said. "We'd been in power so long that we didn't think we needed to do it."

The lack of a message or brand makes it difficult for Democrats to capitalize on Bush's political slump and a series of GOP scandals. While the party is unified in accusing Republicans of creating a "culture of corruption," Democrats still need to give voters a compelling alternative to GOP rule.

and

He also believes that voters are more interested in a candidate's intangible leadership qualities than his positions on lists of issues.

"We have to appeal to people's hearts and not just their heads," he said.

We've got the community, it's the activist community. But they aren't all on the same page in including a basic set of moral values in their reason for being. Once we do that, and get them sold on the notion of reform, even if it means they have to change, we're half way there without having spent a DNC penny.

[goforit]

38. Sounds like Centered Dems will screw it up again!!!..Go Dean!!!

Stay on the left side.

Centered Dems do nothing but screw themselves and us
for the last 6 years!!!

[hogwyld]

41. What Dean needs to do

Is make a sharp left turn, tell the corporations and repug wannabe's to take a hike. If you answer the people's wishes, they will come.

[madfloridian]

43. Step back and think about what you just said.

That's all I can say.

[JoFerret]

48. We're lucky

to have Dean in this position right now. All power to him.

[NMDemDist2]

51. I was just telling hubby the exact same thing on the way to work

a few days ago, you've got to get folks in the same area or interests and then keep them occupied and growing

cool.

[jaysunb]

52. Which Democrats would these be ?

The ones alluded to here :

Some Democrats look back at Dean's rise-and-fall presidential campaign and wonder whether he has the management skills to carry out his plans or the ability to raise the money needed to pay for them.


Might these be the main wing of those proven failures also known as the DLC ? Or is it just the writer spinning his/her own spin ?

Having been elected five times as Governor of a state that boasted a balanced budget every year he was in office and found ways provide health insurance for 90% of said states citizens--among other progressive things, it would appear he's a damn good manager.

Friends of Howard Dean raised in excess of 56 million dollars---averaging $17. a person--proving that corporations aren't neccessary when people are so encouraged by a message, they are willing to contribute and volunteer.