Captain's Quarters -

The Dean Of Divisiveness

In this ever-changing, mixed-up world, thank goodness that we have the constant of Howard Dean's mouth. Easily one of the most hypocritical political figures in the past generation, Dean decided to lecture America on "divisiveness". Of course, he blamed Republicans for it, within hours of comparing one GOP candidate to a mass-murdering dictator and calling a visiting dignitary anti-Semitic:

Down with divisiveness was the message Wednesday delivered by Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean as he told a group of Florida business leaders that Republican policies of deceit and finger-pointing are tearing American apart.

Great modeling for that anti-divisiveness campaign, Howie.

The Republican agenda "is flag-burning and same-sex marriage and God knows what else," Dean said. "We need real change in this country. We're in trouble."

And that would be .... less divisive? Actually, Dean was just cooling down from earlier statements, where he compared Katherine Harris to ... Joseph Stalin. He also called visiting Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki an anti-Semite:

Democrat leader Howard Dean called the Iraqi prime minister an "anti-Semite" during an address before party loyalists on Wednesday, drawing a swift rebuke from Republicans. The Democratic National Committee chairman also called Republican Senate candidate Katherine Harris a "crook" and compared her to Stalin. ...

"Thank God for Bill Nelson, because we'd have another crook in the United States Senate if it weren't for him. He is going to beat the pants off Katherine Harris," Dean said during his 20-minute address. "She doesn't understand that it's…improper to be chairman of a campaign and count the votes at the same time. This is not Russia and she is not Stalin."

Recall, please, that the Dean of Divisiveness once defended the presumption of innocence for Osama bin Laden in relation to the 9/11 attacks, a presumption he didn't bother granting Tom DeLay. Dean also called the Republicans the "white Christian party", and famously revealed that he hates Republicans, "and everything they stand for".

Dean doesn't want to abandon divisiveness; he's raised it to an art form, and it's the only tool in his arsenal.

UPDATE: I forgot to give The Florida Masochist a hat-tip on the Harris link. Sorry, Bill!

Dean Flopping At DNC

A party chairman has two main functions, interrelated but not the same: building the voter base and raising funds. In the former role, the chair has to reach outside the base to bring in new voters while maintaining good relations with the people already inside the tent. The latter role gets measured more in opposition to what the other major party accomplishes during the same period.

In both tasks, it looks like the Howard Dean experiment has failed. Dean has spent most of the past year playing to a radical base with statements like "I hate Republicans and everything they stand for," instead of working with liberal Republicans and center-minded independents that eschew that kind of hatred politics. Today, the Washington Post reports that Dean -- whom the DNC selected for his prodigious fundraising ability in the last presidential primary season -- has allowed another huge funding gap between the DNC and RNC to arise on the cusp of the mid-term elections:

The former Vermont governor and presidential candidate took the chairmanship of the national party eight months ago, riding the enthusiasm of grass-roots activists who relished his firebrand rhetorical style. But he faced widespread misgivings from establishment Democrats, including elected officials and Washington operatives, who questioned whether Dean was the right fit in a job that traditionally has centered on fundraising and the courting of major donors.

Now, the latest financial numbers are prompting new doubts. From January through September, the Republican National Committee raised $81.5 million, with $34 million remaining in the bank. The Democratic National Committee, by contrast, showed $42 million raised and $6.8 million in the bank. ...

Several Washington Democrats not favorably inclined toward Dean said the party was willing to gamble on his "potential for hoof in mouth disease" -- in the words of one lobbyist -- because of the unexpected fundraising prowess he showed in the 2004 race.

Well, they got the disease in spades, but the money has mostly failed to arrive. With the midterm primaries less than three months away, the GOP has four times as much money in the bank as the Democrats, and they have done much more work in reaching outside of their traditional base for both voters and candidates. Ken Mehlman has drafted Lynn Swann to run as a Republican for the Pennsylvania governor's race, and convinced Michael Steele to campaign for the Senate. What has Dean done to convince pro-life moderates to run for the Democrats, or even to vote for them?

By any measure, the Dean chairmanship has been a failure of embarrassing proportions for the Democrats, but now they're stuck with him for at least one electoral cycle. If they fire him now, his radical-left base may well bolt to the Greens, and the Democrats can't afford that at this point with so many of their other constituencies in flux. The other option will be to force a new staff on Dean that will reduce his role to that of a national figurehead while competent fundraisers and party builders take their orders from someone else. Expect Democrats to take the latter option and try to play catch-up to Mehlman and the GOP over the next 90 days.

Saddam Treated Women Better: Howard Dean

Howard Dean gave his opponents another reason to look forward to his television appearances and his supporters another cringe-worthy moment in his interview on Face the Nation yesterday. Dean told CBS viewers that a genocidal Saddam provided a better environment than what he expects will come from a democratic Iraq:

Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman who was the hero of his party's anti-war wing before his gaffe-prone 2004 presidential candidacy crashed and burned in Iowa, still doesn't think the Iraqis are better off with dictator Saddam Hussein out of power and in prison.

Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation" yesterday, the fiery former Vermont governor said, "It looks like today, and this could change, as of today it looks like women will be worse off in Iraq than they were when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq."

Of course, those mass graves certainly show plenty of evidence that Saddam Hussein considered himself an equal-opportunity genocidist. Under Saddam, women had all the same opportunities as men -- to get tortured, raped, falsely imprisoned, starved off their land, and to serve as test subjects for his chemical-weapons programs, as in Halabja.

Mad How strikes again. How many strikes does he get before the DNC finally calls him out?

Dafydd: Flipper the Duck

Patterico has noticed an astonishing claim by Howard Dean -- no, I mean astonishing even on the Dean Scale -- a few days ago (I can't find the exact date).

Here comes Mr. Chairman:

The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is "okay" to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is.

Let us all ponder this audacious argument. My old dictionary defines "chutzpah" as Lizzie Borden pleading for mercy from the judge on grounds that she's an orphan. But next year's edition will eschew written examples in favor of a photo of Chairman Dean.

What Dean has done, of course, is simply to flip the political identity of the justices on the Court; in Dean's world, it was the "right-wing" caucus on the Court -- Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and Kennedy -- that ruled in favor of the city of New London, CT, in the Kelo case; while the "left-wingers" (Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, and O'Connor) desperately tried to stick up for the little guy. It's Howard Dean through the looking glass!

Patterico has also noticed the thundering sound of a million crickets chirping in the MSM auditorium; or as Paul Simon (the successful singer, not the lefty senator) wrote, the "sounds of silence." It's hard to imagine so many quiet noises if it had been Bill Frist or Tom DeLay who casually flipped left and right; Dana Milbank in particular would have gotten at least four op-eds out of it.

In honor of Howard "Flipper" Dean, herewith, offered for your approval:

They call him Flipper, Flipper, quick to the cameras,
No-one you've seen, spins faster than Dean,
And we know Flipper, lives in a media bubble,
Truth lies in rubble, watch Howard preen!

He's a hot tipper, Flipper, makes the news fright'ning,
Giddy they seem with "I Have a Scream,"
They know their Flipper feeds them the soundbites to plotz for,
Cheap dirty shots whore, he's on their team!

The Devil Makes Him Do It?

After some disarray on how to handle their out-of-control party chairman, leading Democrats have finally arrived at a strategy to unite behind Howard Dean and his overactive mouth. They now blame the right-wing elements within the media for overreacting to his statements for reporting Dean's comments:

The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate yesterday blamed "the right wing" and elements of the press "in service to it" for repeating Howard Dean's remarks about Republicans and inflating them out of proportion.

"I think we all understand what's happening with you all," said Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, in remarks echoing Hillary Rodham Clinton's blaming a "vast right-wing conspiracy" for her husband's legal-ethical woes.

"The right wing has got the agenda moving. Fox [News Channel] and everybody's got the agenda. It's all about Howard Dean. You've bought into it," Mr. Durbin said.

"You can't let up on it. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

Other party leaders quickly followed suit. Harry Reid said that no one has avoided misspeaking in public, not even RNC chair and Dean counterpart Ken Mehlman, implying that the press somehow covers up for Mehlman where it reports everything that Dean says. Barbara Boxer claims his remarks were taken out of context, telling the media that they want "some kind of a controversy, so they don't give the message of Howard Dean ... We all know that the other side is bound and determined to hurt Howard Dean and destroy him, as they usually do with leaders of our party."

No, you have not inadvertently surfed to Scrappleface.

When was the last time you heard Democrats complaining about their party leaders getting too much press coverage for their speeches? It isn't as if this happened once and the press keeps bringing the same misstatement to their attention. As James Lakely notes, these comments come from almost every major speech Howard Dean gives -- and since those speeches are given in representation of the Democratic Party, they do equate to news. The press also covers Mehlman's speeches, but Mehlman doesn't allow stupid, divisive, and bigoted remarks to fly out of his mouth like spittle from a madman.

Durbin, Reid, and Boxer are the ones who should be ashamed of themselves for blaming the messenger rather than Howard Dean himself for Dean's hate-filled bile. How can these possibly be improved by context?

Mr. Dean, who took over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee four months ago, has caused a stir with a string of public statements that he "hates the Republican Party and everything it stands for" and that its members are "liars," "evil," "corrupt" and "brain-dead." ...

In February, he told the Congressional Black Caucus that the Republican Party "couldn't get this many people of color in a single room" unless "they had the hotel staff in here." And on Monday told a gathering of California journalists that the Republican "party is basically a white, Christian party," a remark he defended on NBC's "Today" show Tuesday morning.

And let's not forget the recent comment that Republicans have never had to do an honest day's work in their lives. I'm sure that message works very well among the Al Franken fringe of the party, and if that's where the Democrats want to focus their efforts, then they've picked the right DNC chair. Dean epitomizes the transition of the Democrats into a party based on hate and the capture of the leadership by the radical Left that forms the base of Dean's support.

Unfortunately, the elected Democratic leadership has chosen to abdicate to these haters and blame everyone but themselves for the problems it causes. When senior Democrats come fresh out of a strategy meeting and blame Republicans for what comes out of their DNC chair's mouth, they're only a short walk from Moonbat Land, where some already suspect that Dean may be working under orders from Karl Rove. If this is all that Democrats have to offer, they will be a minority party for a generation or more.

Dean Plays Race Card

Howard Dean continued his self-immolation as DNC chair yesterday, telling a San Francisco audience that the GOP was nothing more than a "white Christian party", and then claimed he was just being "tough":

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, unapologetic in the face of recent criticism that he has been too tough on his political opposition, said in San Francisco this week that Republicans are "a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party."

"The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people," Dean said Monday, responding to a question about diversity during a forum with minority leaders and journalists. "We're more welcoming to different folks, because that's the type of people we are. But that's not enough. We do have deliver on things: jobs and housing and business opportunities."

Howard's last broadside, that Republicans never put in an honest day's work, even had Democrats repelled. Two prominent Democratic politicians -- Joe Biden and John Edwards, who'd like to run for President if Howard hasn't destroyed the party by then -- both said that Dean didn't speak for them. He's driving off major donors, claiming that the party needs to focus on Internet collections instead of deep-pocket patrons. However, the Democrats have raised less than half the money that the GOP has since the first of the year, and his rhetoric appears to be costing them support from the center.

This last charge is hilarious coming from Dean. Recall, please, what started the Dean collapse during the 2004 primary race. Dean came to the Iowa caucuses as the acclaimed frontrunner by raising prodigious amounts of money, thanks to Joe Trippi and his visionary outreach. He had the momentum and had captured the imagination of the party. The Iowa caucuses were expected to anoint him as the dragonslayer against the hated George Bush.

Then the Iowa debate came on January 11th, and it all slipped away -- and race was his Kryptonite, and Al Sharpton his Lex Luthor. Sharpton skewered Dean so badly that he left the Vermont governor blinking into the cameras like Dan Quayle in 1988 in his debate against Lloyd Bentson:

SHARPTON: I want to -- you know, I have to ask this. I was going to ask Dennis something.

But I have to ask you this, Governor Dean, because I was disappointed you weren't in Washington the other day. But you keep talking about talking about race. In the state of Vermont -- where you were governor '97, '99, 2001 -- not one black or brown held a senior policy position, not one. You yourself said we must do something about it. Nothing was done.

Can you explain -- since now you want to convene everyone and talk about race, it seems as though you have discovered blacks and browns during this campaign. How you can explain not one black or brown working for your administration as governor?

DEAN: Well, actually, I beg to differ with your statistics there.

SHARPTON: This is according to your paper in Vermont, the Associated Press, and the Center for Women in Government.

DEAN: Well, perhaps you ought not to believe everything in the Associated Press.

SHARPTON: Oh, so you're saying they're incorrect?

DEAN: We do have African-American and Latino workers in state government, including...

SHARPTON: No, no, I said under your administration. Do you have a senior member of your cabinet that was black or brown?

DEAN: We had a senior member of my staff on my fifth floor.

SHARPTON: No, your cabinet.

DEAN: No, we did not.

SHARPTON: OK, that's not...

DEAN: ... six members.

SHARPTON: Then you need to let me talk to you about race in this country.

DEAN: Well, let me just say one thing, which I have said before but I'll say it again. If the percentage of African-Americans in your state was any indication of what your views on race were, then Trent Lott would be Martin Luther King.

SHARPTON: But I don't think that that answers the question. I think if you're talking -- if you want to lecture people on race, you ought to have the background and track record in order to do that. And I think that clearly people -- governors import talent, governors reach all over the country to make sure they have diversity.

And I think that, while I respect the fact you brought race into this campaign, you ought to talk freely and openly about whether you went out of the box to try to do something about race in your home state and have experience with working with blacks and browns at peer level, not as just friends you might have had in college.

The bombshell from the Reverend came as a shock to the national audience, which had never seen the Vermont fireplug stumble so badly -- and the Democrats suddenly started to question not only Dean's qualifications to address race but his ability to withstand the heat of a general election.

Now Mad How wants to talk about race again. All I can say is that I've seen the Reverend Al Sharpton, Howard -- and you are no Reverend Al. And you of all people should know that.

Democrats Dissatisfied With Dean

USA Today picks up on a building realization in political circles that Howard Dean may not have been the best choice to represent Democrats as the party tries to find some appeal to centrists. Jill Lawrence uses the same contrast as I did earlier this week between Dean and his GOP counterpart, Ken Mehlman, to plumb Democratic dissatisfaction with the Vermont governor's first 100 days on the job:

Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is courting black and Hispanic voters on a regular basis. Beyond the usual run of speeches, fundraisers and meetings with donors, he has visited Latino neighborhoods and historically black campuses. He has attended black-oriented receptions and ceremonies, spoken to minority chambers of commerce and raised money for Otto Banks of Harrisburg, Pa., a black city council candidate new to the GOP.

Dean, who reaches Day 100 as Democratic National Committee chairman Monday, is for the most part speaking to diehard Democrats who are the backbone of their party. He's addressed Democrats in nine states dominated by Republicans, such as Kansas and Mississippi, and in party strongholds such as California and Massachusetts. He's spoken to labor unions, gay-rights groups and state party chairs — all pillars of the party.

Some Democrats are frustrated by the contrast between the two approaches, even as they praise Dean's efforts to revitalize flagging state parties. "Democrats should be stirring things up, roiling the waters on (the GOP) side the way Mehlman is on ours. He's playing in our sandbox," says Steve Rosenthal, CEO of America Coming Together, a group formed to energize and turn out Democratic voters.

Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute, agrees that Democrats need to "go raiding behind Republican lines." He says his group and the affiliated Democratic Leadership Council will be doing "some missionary work of our own" in Republican states this year.

Even more disturbing to Democrats has been Dean's lack of message discipline. In a period when stemwinders should be placed in mothballs in favor of positive focus on party priorities, Dean instead has gone out of his way to generate headline-grabbing soundbites that result in embarassment for the DNC. They selected Dean for his enthusiastic Leftist following and his earlier ability during his Vermont career to build a consensus in the center. However, he's given little evidence of that ability, or even that desire, as he moves across the country:

Dean is offering Democrats his trademark red-meat rhetoric along with guidance on outreach. In speeches covered locally, he has called Republicans "corrupt," "brain-dead" and "mean." "They are not nice people," he said last month in a radio interview on Air America Minnesota, according to the political newsletter Hotline. Last weekend he said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, whose associates are under investigation but who has not been charged with anything, should go home to Houston to "serve his jail sentence" at Texas expense.

At the same time, Dean tells Democrats they need to "respect people in all 50 states" and try to win them over. "We need to talk to people from our hearts," he told California Democrats. He said Democrats should "say what our values are" and "inform Americans about what we believe instead of letting the other party do it."

He should be heeding his own advice. Howard Kurtz noticed that the left wing of the blogosphere has quit jumping to Dean's defense, and even links to Blue State, which would like someone to turn down Howard's "loud". (Howard Kurtz also links to CQ in the same column regarding his attacks on Tom DeLay.) Dean hasn't just failed to appeal to the center, he's beginning to lose the trust of the committed base. These are the same mistakes he made over and over again during the primary, and when challenged he falls apart, usually on camera as he did with Al Sharpton during the Iowa debate.

Dean faces Tim Russert on Sunday morning, which has to be a make-or-break point in his new job. If he can't explain his rhetoric away and shift back to party-building with the high-profile but likely sympathetic Russert, Dean may soon find himself back on the bike paths of Vermont. The Democrats cannot afford to have Mehlman eat away at their base while Dean antagonizes the centrists, and players like Rosenthal and Marshall know it.

UPDATE: Mad How's still at it:

Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, who famously refused to prejudge Osama bin Laden's guilt, is standing by his judgment that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay may deserve jail time for allegations of corruption.

"Tom DeLay is corrupt. No question about it," Dean said Friday. "This is a guy who shouldn't be in Congress and maybe ought to be serving in jail."

What's Dean up to -- building his campaign for Travis County DA?

The Coming Dean Debacle

The selection of Howard Dean as DNC party chairman has clearly become a liability for Democrats looking to recapture the center, as Donald Lambro writes in today's Washington Times. Democratic pollsters have discovered a significant 'parents gap' in last year's presidential election, as Bush topped Kerry by almost 20 points among moms and dads. Not only did these mainstream voters find more alignment with Bush, but the active sellout of the Democrats to the Hollywood entertainment elite producing ever more violent and inappropriate fare for children have turned large numbers of them away:

An analysis by a Democratic think tank argues that Democrats are suffering from a severe "parent gap" among married people with children, who say the entertainment industry is lowering the moral standards of the country.

The study, published last week by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), the policy arm of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, admonishes Democrats to pay more attention to parental concerns about "morally corrosive forces in the culture," and warns that the party will not fare better with this pivotal voting bloc until they do.

In the 2004 election, married parents supported President Bush over Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts by nearly 20 percentage points. Mr. Bush frequently talked about the importance of faith and morals in his campaign and the role that parents played in raising their children. Mr. Kerry and his party, much of whose campaign funding and political support came from liberals in the entertainment industry, rarely touched the issue.

"Democrats will not do better with married parents until they recognize one simple truth: Parents have a beef with popular culture. As they see it, the culture is getting ever more violent, materialistic, and misogynistic, and they are losing their ability to protect their kids from morally corrosive images and messages," said the study's author, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project of Rutgers University and a senior fellow at PPI.

Remember the moment in New York when John Kerry declared that the potty-mouthed antics of Whoopi Goldberg and her friends constituted the "heart and soul" of America? At the time, it hardly made a blip in Kerry's polling, and probably by that time most parents had already decided to support Bush instead for the reasons given. However, that moment cemented Kerry and the Democrats as fatally out of touch with mainstream Americans. Neither Democrats nor Hollywood has yet to get the message.

Howard Dean's installation as DNC chair proves that much. Dean represents the radical left of the party, wrapped up in a tie and rolled-up shirtsleeves but extremists nonetheless. Democrats wanted to harness the energy and power of the International ANSWER/MOveOn contingent by embracing them through Dean rather than pushing them towards the Greens. However, as the Democrat polling shows, all Dean does is attract more obstacles for reaching out to centrists:

In an attempt to reach out to evangelical Christians in the Republican red states, Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has been talking much more about values and "the culture," and sprinkling his attacks on Republicans with phrases from the Bible.

"We need to kick the money changers out of the temple and restore moral values to America," he said last week in Florida.

But an online survey of 11,568 Dean supporters released earlier this month by the Pew Research Center found that such religious or culturally conservative appeals may not play well with liberal Democrats.

Among the Pew findings, 38 percent of Dean supporters polled said they had no religious affiliation, compared with 11 percent of all Americans; 91 percent supported same-sex "marriage," compared with 38 percent of all Democrats; and 80 percent said they were liberals, compared with 27 percent of all Democrats.

For a man who notoriously gave up his religious affiliation over a bike path, spouting Bible verses will not likely convince any of the faithful that the Democrats have suddenly opened their arms to religious voters. Opposition of key Senate Democrats to judicial nominees with "deeply held personal beliefs" speaks much louder to churchgoing Americans than a couple of Biblical non-sequiturs from Dean. Dean's pandering on religion won't win him any support, but according to the results above, it could severely cut into his personal approval base if he does it often and publicly enough.

The Democrats have wound up with the worst of both worlds with Howard Dean. He's too radical to appeal to the voters in the center with any credibility at all, and if he gives more than a token effort to do so, he'll lose the people who put him in power at all. We tried to warn them ... but they just wouldn't listen to us.

Dean Visits Kansas, Gets Snubbed By Dem Governor

Howard Dean fulfilled a pledge made during his campaign for the DNC chair by visiting and rallying Democrats in a Midwestern red state. Dean went to Kansas yesterday, a state that has supported GOP presidential candidates since Goldwater in 1964, and railed against Social Security reforms and budget deficits. He also urged Democrats to "show up", inadvertently highlighting an embarassing snub:

The former presidential candidate and Vermont governor criticized President Bush's budget record and plans for Social Security while urging people to get involved in politics no matter what their philosophy. ...

Before his selection as DNC chairman this month, Dean said he would bolster local and state party organizations even in the nation's most conservative areas.

"How do we expect those places to vote Democratic when we don't even show up?" Dean said during Thursday's speech.

Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who was elected in a 2002 race marked by tensions between moderate and conservative Republicans, hadn't planned to attend any of Dean's events.

So the highest-ranking Democrat in Kansas has no plans to be seen in public with the leader of her party? That certainly sends a message, and not the one Dean intended when he embarked on his red-state tour. Sebelius knows that any indication of support for Dean and his MoveOn-sponsored agenda would be the kiss of death for her political career in Kansas and wants to stay far away from Mad How.

If the Democrats seriously want to engage the moderates, they picked the wrong man to lead them. No one doubts that leftists and radicals live in places like Kansas, but no one except Howard Dean thinks they can win elections for the Democrats. Sebelius obviously has better political instincts for the heartland than the DNC, and she's using them to avoid Dean. Democrats hanging onto office in other red states will follow the lead of Sebelius and wind up making a mockery of Dean's tour throughout red-state America.

Dean has it wrong: it isn't enough to simply show up. You have to have a platform that appeals to moderates, and Dean and MoveOn don't have it. Sebelius knows this and knows that sometimes, showing up is too much to ask.

Why Howard Dean Will Cost The Democrats More Elections

The rationale for the DNC's selection of Howard Dean as party chair has been that he "energized their base," driving many new voters into electoral politics and creating a juggernaut for his campaign. Despite his eventual humbling during the primary, the Democrats still want to harness that effort and star quality of Howard Dean to provide energy and momentum for their attempt to reverse three straight election-cycle setbacks. However, as Dan Balz points out in today's Washington Post, the Democrats appear clueless as to how Dean's leadership will affect the party's direction:

The bloggers have been busy on the Democratic National Committee Web site since Howard Dean was elected party chairman a week ago.

"Paul in OC" and "Steviemo in MN" wrote that they had made their first-ever contributions to the national committee. Someone identified as "J" pleaded with Dean to come to Florida, "home of Baby Bush," to "heal the irritating red and help us become a cool blue state again." "Donna in Evanston" wrote, "It's sad, but it is up to the grassroots to set the example for our representatives in Washington. Howard gets it. Maybe some day the beltway bunch will get it too." ...

But the rising of this grass-roots force also signals a shift in the balance of power within the party, one that raises questions about its ultimate impact on a Democratic Party searching for direction and identity after losses in 2002 and 2004.

At a minimum, say party strategists, the shift will mean a more confrontational Democratic Party in battles with President Bush and the Republicans. But some strategists worry that the influence of grass-roots activists could push the party even further to the left, particularly on national security, reinforcing a weakness that Bush exploited in his reelection campaign.

It only takes a bit of short-term memory to remind people how an obscure Vermont governor vaulted John Kerry and a slate of nationally-known Democrats to a huge fundraising and popularity lead early in the electoral cycle. He calculated that the energy of the opposition primarily came from the coterie of leftist groups opposing Bush on the war on terror, a faction that DLC adherents and Clintonites had kept at arms' length, for good reason. Dean became the first credible candidate to give patronage to the radical elements of MoveOn and International ANSWER, the latter an openly unreconstructed neo-Stalinist group. In doing so, he radicalized the election and eventually forced Kerry to appropriate Dean's message when Dean wilted under the pressure in Iowa.

The pressure to continue that change into the highest ranks of the Democratic Party comes from these same groups and their financial backers, people like George Soros, last seen funding the defense of Lynne Stewart, who eventually got convicted of abetting Islamofascist terrorism. The head of the MoveOn PAC, Eli Pariser, wants that kind of demarcation between the two parties, demanding the kind of ideological purity that has lost the center over the past four years:

"I think it's pretty clear that the era of triangulation is over," he said. "The reason for that is that if you step halfway between Republicans and Democrats, you get your head cut off by Republicans. There's no compromise and no mercy, so I think it's pretty clear that Democrats need to be an opposition that can explain why we believe the current administration is corrupt and misleading the country. It's not something you can do easily by putting yourself somewhere between the poles."

In other words, the people that the DNC hope to energize by bringing Dean on as chair do not want to attract the centrists back to the party, and are openly disdainful of those who put themselves somewhere between the poles. These Democrats want their party to be the Super-Greens, Democrats in name only in the space of a generation removed from Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

It's their party now, as has been said; Soros bought it and he apparently runs it. Dean proved to be both strategically and tactically clueless when the heat got applied in January 2004, and his ideology and attraction threatens much the same result when he takes the reins for next year's midterm elections. When Hillary Clinton -- the woman who tried to nationalize the American health-care system -- represents the center-right of any party, then that party has marginalized itself into oblivion. They may truly find themselves facing the same fate as the Whigs of two centuries ago.

The Party Of Media Silence

Howard Dean started his reign as Democratic National Committee chair in style today -- silent-movie style, that is. Dean demanded a media blackout of a debate he held with Pentagon advisor Richard Perle, much to Perle's surprise:

"DNC Chair Howard Dean has declared a news blackout of his appearance and requested the media not quote, record, and/or paraphrase his remarks," event coordinator Gabrielle Williams wrote in an e-mail sent to news agencies Wednesday morning. "We apologize for the late notice, but we were just informed of this request."

Less than two hours later, Williams called to say: "We were told just a few minutes ago that it is now open" for media coverage. The decision to open Thursday's debate came roughly 30 minutes after an inquiry by The Associated Press.

What gives, Chairman Dean? Perhaps a bit of reluctance to face the press from the new head of the Democratic Party, or just flashbacks to his disastrous performance at the Iowa Caucus debates, where Al Sharpton effectively killed his presidential campaign. For those who may have forgotten, Sharpton skewered Dean on his record of hiring African-Americans as advisors in Vermont, where African-Americans account for less than half a percent of the population.

Whatever the reason, the former governor must have had his reasons for keeping the press away from a public debate with one of the leading so-called "neocons" at the Pentagon. Perle, however, had no idea that the Democrats had such fear of the Fourth Estate. Apparently, it's not just Perle that Dean fears, but all of his public events:

Perle said that he was surprised to learn that the press had been barred from covering the debate.

"It seems quite extraordinary that the chairman of the Democratic National Committee would not want the public coverage of this debate," said Perle, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Don Walker, president of the Harry Walker Agency, which represents Dean on the lecture circuit, said that many of the talks it is associated with are closed to the press — and it's up to the individual speaker to decide whether he or she wants them to be open. "We default to a closed press policy," he said.

Do Democrats support the idea of the free press and transparency in government? The standardbearer of their party -- the man they just elected to stand up to the GOP and rebuild their momentum after three straight election-cycle losses -- can't even speak publicly on the record. It appears that their concern over transparency and free speech only applies to the lesser lights, while the Democratic leadership needs to keep their new main man out of the papers.

Do you think Democrats wonder why? Yeaaargh!

Howard Dean Finally Wins A National Election

Howard Dean finally manages to win a nationwide Democratic election, although he had to have everyone else drop out of the race first to do it. The New York Times reports that Dean is the last man standing for DNC chair after Rep. Tim Roemer dropped out:

Timothy J. Roemer, the last of Howard Dean's rivals in the race for Democratic national chairman, dropped out on Monday, assuring Dr. Dean of victory.

Mr. Roemer, a former congressman from Indiana, had been backed by the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, and had staked out a position as the most conservative alternative to Dr. Dean.

Roemer didn't leave the race quietly, however:

But as he dropped out Monday, he stood his ground. He said Democrats had allowed President Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove, to define the party's abortion politics, and called on Democratic leaders to become more inclusive.

"Some in our party have tried to make that a radioactive anvil around my neck," Mr. Roemer said of the abortion issue. "I've had everything, including a couple of kitchen sinks, thrown at me the last few weeks. But I'm not deterred."

Roemer's warning will likely go unheeded by the firebrand Dean, whose initial lead in the Democratic primaries melted away as soon as the first votes were held. Dean famously also melted down in the crucible of Iowa, first in a Dan Quayle moment with Al Sharpton at the pre-caucus debate, and then in an absurd post-caucus appearance that gave the impression of a severe separation from reality. Now the man who couldn't even win a single primary except in his home state of Vermont despite raising $40 million and leading in virtually every poll will lead the Democrats in strategizing their comeback from the wilderness.

If the Democrats wanted to cement their status as a minority party, they couldn't do a better job. Is anyone awake at the DNC?

Faith-Based Hate From Howard Dean

I missed this yesterday, but Myopic Zeal points out a revealing New York Daily News item about Howard Dean and his quest to lead the Democrats for the next four years. Dean rallied his supporters by engaging in his famously moderate rhetoric:

"I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for, but I admire their discipline and their organization," the failed presidential hopeful told the crowd at the Roosevelt Hotel, where he and six other candidates spoke at the final DNC forum before the Feb. 12 vote for chairman.

But Dean said the Democrats should not change their beliefs to be "Republican lite."

"We can talk about our faith, but we cannot change our faith," he said, echoing themes he sounded in his presidential bid. "We need to be people of conviction."

Oh my. Does the DNC want the Democrats to become the Party of Hate? And just what kind of faith does Howard Dean have that requires him to "hate" Republicans? I have no problem with opposition; that's the basis of free speech and democracy, after all. But to have someone who wants to claim the leadership post of one of the two major political parties tell the nation that he hates a plurality of Americans would disqualify a Republican candidate immediately. Apparently, over at the DNC, that's their primary prerequisite.

Dean and his followers demonstrate the illness that has infected the American Left since the 1960s. They don't just oppose -- they hate. They hate Republicans, they hate suburbia, they hate just about everything America has done. They also hate it when people point out this rather obvious fact, claiming that their critics engage in censorship and McCarthyism. However, it's pretty damned difficult to maintain that facade when Dean gets up on a stump and says, "I hate Republicans and everything they stand for."

Will the Democrats elect Dean chair of the DNC? Are they prepared to endorse his platform of hate? If they do, they just confirm that the party has completely lost its mind, and the leadership has consigned themselves to a generation of diminishing minorities. They may as well change the name to the Whigs, as Howard Dean and the neo-Stalinists at International ANSWER will drive them to the same fate.

Dems Run GOP's Anti-Dean Playbook

How desperate are the Democrats to prevent Howard Dean from becoming chair of the Democratic National Committee? Desperate enough to validate practically every argument made by Republicans and conservative commentators during the early primary season in 2003-4, according to Howard Fineman in Newsweek today:

Last week the search for a surefire Dean-stopper (if there is one) reached new levels, NEWSWEEK has learned, with several governors—among them Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Bill Richardson of New Mexico—trying to gin up a last-ditch plan: let Dean be chairman, but confine his role to pure nuts-and-bolts duties by layering him with a new "general chairman" spokesman for the party. They abandoned the idea after realizing that they didn't have the votes to change the rules—and because the person they wanted to take the new role, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, told them she had no interest.

That left the anti-Dean forces with only one clear strategy: recycling the long list of his provocative statements. Among them: that we shouldn't judge Osama bin Laden until he has a jury trial; that America won't always have the strongest military; that "if Bill Clinton could be the first black president, I can be the first gay president." The ABD forces were also pointing reporters to an off-the-record Harvard seminar in November, at which Dean is rumored to have facetiously suggested that Democrats leave Wyoming rather than put up with anti-gay attitudes there.

Does anyone find it interesting that the man who appeared to have the support of the majority of Demomcrats until his Iowa meltdown now causes such "fear and loathing" among the party's leaders? Had he won Iowa, they would have gladly lined up behind Dean to elect him as leader of the free world. Now he's not even good enough to lead the primary strategy committee for their party, and they're so afraid of him that they want to keep changing the rules to keep his hands off the wheel without adult supervision.

(Memo to Dean: Changing rules mid-election is a time-honored Democratic election fraud tradition. Get used to it.)

If Dean is this dangerous, why did Democrats like Tom Harkin and Al Gore endorse him? If Dean represents such a destructive force, why did he raise $40 million and get the notorious Hollywood activists behind him? Barbra Streisand, Rob Reiner, Steven Spielberg and others apparently either have gotten too radical for the Democrats -- we wish -- or the Dems had no problem foisting Dean on America while wanting him excluded from their exclusive tete-a-tetes.

I guess we'll never go broke betting on Democratic hypocrisy. In the meantime, I'll suggest that the DNC read through my DeanWatch category for ammunition against the Vermont Strangler.

A Gift That Keeps On Giving

I'm brushing off the long-abandoned DeanWatch category, as it appears the Democrats are about to reinforce their cluelessness by replacing three-time loser Terry McAuliffe with the darling of the International ANSWER set, former Vermont governor Howard Dean:

Former presidential candidate Howard Dean is considering a bid to become chairman of the national Democratic Party.

"He told me he was thinking about it," Steve Grossman, himself a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Monday. Grossman was a Dean backer during the former Vermont governor's failed presidential bid.

Dean, who was in Albany, N.Y., Monday night to give a speech, said he hasn't decided about the top party job, noting he'd received thousands of e-mails urging him to try for it. He said he's still uncertain about his future.

"It's a lot easier to run for president when you don't know what you're getting into," he said. "I will stay involved, believe me."

I believe him -- especially after watching his meltdown as it occurred in Iowa ten months ago. Afterwards, reports revealed that Dean had not believed winning possible and was unprepared for his role as frontrunner. It's not likely after that performance that the Democrats would trust him for another run, especially after their string of poor national performances in the last three election cycles. The last person they'll put at the top of their ticket in 2008 is a Northeastern liberal with demonstrated stability issues and a radical base.

However bad Terry McAuliffe is -- and he's been a catastrophe for the Democrats -- putting Howard Dean in charge may only have the effect of a slight change in tone. It does nothing to drag the party back to Middle America. Let's not forget that Howard Dean famously left his church in a fit of pique over their lack of support for a bike path; is this the man who could bridge the gap between the urban secularists of the blue states and the wide swath of red between the coasts?

Of course, Dean hasn't even tossed his hat in the ring for the DNC chair yet. The e-mail barrage he's received from disappointed Democrats still points to an essential cluelessness about their poor performance in this election as well as 2000 and 2002. The only positive aspect of a Dean chairmanship is that it couldn't possibly be worse than McAuliffe's leadership. Putting Dean in charge would only make the marriage beween the radicals at International ANSWER and the Democrats much stronger and put more distance between the Democrats and mainstream America.

In the words of their latest candidate ... bring it on.