Dean! Dean! Dean! Dean! Yeeaarrghh!

Okay, I give up.  I'll talk about Howard Dean and the DNC.  So many people have sent me this damn petition that I now feel obligated.  Besides, he’s apparently seriously considering it. 

 

I’m opposed to Dean being DNC chair.  I think he’d do a great job; don’t get me wrong.  But I think he’s more effective as a gadfly than as a fundraiser/organizer.  Remember, the innovations in the Dean campaign weren’t Dean’s, they were Trippi’s.  Dean is a gifted speaker – in fact, he’s a gifted demagogue, and our side needs a couple of those.  Vermont residents who remember Governor Dean still don’t get that – he wasn’t a gifted speaker there, where did this come from?  But it’s real.  He’s also a listener.  He did learn to listen to the grassroots and take their direction from time to time.  He knows when it’s time to come down from the podium and hear what people are telling him.  When I introduced the Gov to my father a couple months ago, we explained to him what a PCO was (somehow, he hadn’t gotten this info during the campaign!).  I’ll never forget that during his speech later that evening, he mentioned that he’d just learned about PCO’s – and he mentioned it again when he came out in October to campaign for the Democratic ticket.  He listened, and cared about what my father was doing for Democrats. 

 

He uses these gifts to run roughshod on Democrats who forget who they’re working for.  He’s been merciless on Democrats who voted for the fatty corporate tax-cut bill last month (including my boss).  That bill contained two provisions that needed to be passed (not one, as the gov says):  A $5 billion tax ”correction” to bring our code in line with the WTO and save some companies from unfair exclusion, and the sales tax deductibility portion.  The remaining $138.5 billion was just giveaways to random corporations.  Dems voted for the bill because it contained the sales tax deductibility and they needed that for re-election.  I love my boss, but this is the truth.  She genuinely wanted the deductibility portion, needed it for the re-election, and voted for it for that reason.  A DNC chair can’t crack the whip on stuff like that the way Dean can; the DNC chair has to justify and stand behind it no matter what.  It’s the ultimate cheerleader for anything the party does. 

 

At the same time, we could use some demagoguery from the DNC chair.  Look at what Marc Racicot and Ed Gillespie (the big nazi-looking freak) have done with their mouthpiece.  They’re on TV the instant any Democrat says anything that resonates, with no particular message other than “whichever Dem said that is clearly an America-hating liberal who wants to raise your taxes and force you to have an abortion after marrying a gay man.”  And it fucking works!  We need that on our side; we need someone to call Ed Gillespie out every time he whines like a little baby about the media being unfair or cries out in paranoid horror every time a judge interprets the constitution as requiring fair and equal treatment for all Americans, not just the white, heterosexual Protestant ones.  We need someone to run in front of the cameras moments after any Republican is announced as a candidate for anything and remind America that this person will force women to carry their rapist’s child to term, even if it costs the mother her life.  Someone who will remind all voters that Republicans have one plan in mind, and that is to bankrupt the middle class by eliminating social security and putting it into a 401(k) (remember those?  The ones that failed?), and tacking on either a flat tax, or national sales tax (or both!).  Howard Dean would be incredible at this part of the job, and he would probably raise a lot of money.

 

But he wouldn’t be able to snap the towel at Democrats’ backsides when they need it.  And that’s why I don’t want him as DNC Chair.

 

Later, I’ll write about the misconceptions people have about Dean, and why they can’t get past it.  (too liberal!  The scream!  Too divisive!  Wes Clark is a genius [I’ve met him; genius is the last word I’d use to describe him.  Ignorant, arrogant douchebag are the first three]!  Too elitist!  Not southern enough!)