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Governer Dean Becomes Chair of DNC
sg3000 writes "It's official: the Democrats elected Howard Dean as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Dean won the position after a particularly contentious run for chairman, as reported in The New Republic. Governor Dean became a national figure during his impressive run for president in 2003, where he started as an outsider and long-shot candidate but became the front runner, only to see support fail to materialize during the Iowa caucuses."
Psst...
Gay rights are not a core Democratic platform. Every democratic presidentcal candidate EVER has been against Gay marriage. At the most expansionist, they're in favor of it being up to the states.
(Gay rights are included within a few other party ideals, but they're hardly a major issue.)
... As long as I can't realistically vote libertarian in a presidential election, this is the lesser of the major evils. I like Dean, too. Sure would have preferred him, but I digress.
/. I imagine do, you should try and vote libertarian in your local and even congressional elections.
But, if you lean that LP way, and alot on
What Libertarians actually support.
Go LP!
~Rebecca
Struck a cord with the common man? Come on, Howard Dean was a joke, and it shows there is a leadership problem at the top of the Dem party.
I agree with you that Dean wasn't the one striking a chord with the common man, but I don't think that was the reason. As much as I, and many here, hate George W. Bush, the reason he's in office is "striking a chord with the common man."
He comes off as "common man" with his poor speaking abilities. He goes to schools, and reads stories to children. He went out in the crowd of terrified family members after 9/11, shaking hands and pausing to listen to frightened citizens stories. Then shortly after, he stood up and told the country that he was going to make us safer, and make it alright.
"Common men" don't care about secret tribunals, election fraud, attacking the wrong guy, invading soveriegn nations, alienating the world, or any of that stuff that "nerds" (of all types) care about. They want to be told that their leader empathizes with them, and that by golly, he's going to make it right. That's the stuff that makes the "common man" sleep easy at night.
~Rebecca
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
I really detest that cynical attitude. That the only ones whose opinions are fit are these theoretical "joe sixpacks" that go to blue collar jobs, don't read books, drink domestic beer, etc. etc. I think that stereotype, and buying into it, is stupid, and I don't think any American "common" or "uncommon" should buy into an idea that their opinion doesn't really matter because they are not somehow the "prototypical American". There is no prototypical American. There is no universal Joe Sixpack. There's an implicit reverse elitism in that. There is no fucking reason a lab-worker or aerospace engineer, or single mother middle-manager, or ex-drug-addict playwright are any LESS American than our theoretical Joe Sixpack. I think that's what makes us Americans.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
What I can't believe is how far to the right this country's shifted so quickly. What was the center in 2000 is now the 'extreme left' today. Dean's a proper left-leaning democrat, not a republican-wannabe apologist.
The right's gotten a strong wind recently, and we need to fight back accordingly, not start letting go of core values. And it's well-needed, even with such a poor candidate as Kerry, we still got 48%* of the electorate. Kerry ignored most of the issues at hand and only attacked Bush's strongpoints. I don't think Dean will let our newer candidates make the same mistakes.
Maybe I'm an old romantic, but I don't think homophobia (gay rights), subordination of women (abortion), warmongering (iraq), and the extortion of the lower classes (taxes, social security) are American values.
--
* debates over the remnants of fair voting aside
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"But his views on things like health care, welfare, social security, environmental policy, tax reform and foreign policy range from the standard liberal platform to extremism."
Here is a translation for those people who don't speak extreme wingnuttian...
Dean's Views on:
Google really should develop a language tool for extreme wingnuttian.
My prediction is the Dean will surprise all his critics over the next 4 years as a calm, rational, focused, and successful leader. Why? Because he is a calm, rational, focused, and successful person.
The reason why Dean exploded the way he did is because the media turned against him because he was "unelectable". It was a bunch of bullshit because he was not your typical "say only what you want to hear" politician. I think people in this country would have been smart enough to see that, and it would not have been a landslide win for Bush like the media said it would be. Unfortuntly the media has a lot of effect on the primary elections.
I gave $100 to the Dean campaign, and I do not regret it. That money indirectly helped him become the chair of the DNC, and I am very happy to see it.
BTW, at the Iowa Caucus (I was there) Dean had at least 3x as many people there as Kerry. To be honest, I am still a little amazed how quickly things fell apart.
The thing is, it doesn't really matter if he's crazy. Neither of us know how to spell the outgoing chairman's name. If the Dems had a candidate you liked, why would you vote against that candidate just because the chairman's a loon? His personal angry attidute will forever prevent him from being president, but as a chairman what matters is his organizing and fundraising skills, and perhaps his willingness to think outside establishment terms. The man has good ideas, he's just completely inappropriate for the public eye.
He may be overly antagonistic, but the Republicans managed to succeed despite having twice as much hate and venom as the Democrats--and at least Leftist hate is just anger at another point of view, not Ann Coulter-style racism. It was Kerry and the party establishment's attempt to seem moderate that doomed the campaign. Besides, if you were willing to go with Zell Miller, you've got no right to talk about venom.
It's good that he's a fiscal conservative. We might expect a lot of former Republicans (like myself--I voted for Bush in 2000) to realize their party no longer cares about fiscal conservatism--it's just big government for the sake of big business. The medical overhaul Bush insisted on is a great example of that--he has promised to veto any attempt to limit the windfall to drug companies. As politics switches its focus to domestic issues, Dean could end up looking like a moderate.
The promising thing about Dean is that he knows its not about moving to the center--Americans won't respect someone who capitulates for political convenience. But he also understands that strategic retreats are necessary on certain lost cause issues--like gun control.
The worrying thing about Dean and the Democratic party in general is that they've misunderstood the power of the internet and decentralized organization. They see it in terms of collecting money and volunteers to send to campaign in other states. But that's a foolish plan--people are alienated by out of staters coming to convince them to change their minds, as Dean should have learned in Iowa and Kerry should have learned in Ohio. Instead, internet resources should be aimed at getting people engaged in their own communities--whether its just getting people to volunteer in their own neighborhoods or even encourage people to run for local offices.
Dean is not actually very far left. He is liberal, to be sure, but not in a bleeding heart, knee-jerk kind of way. He was painted with a far left brush based solely on the fact that he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning.
Sad but true. Gay rights are not a core Democratic issue. But they SHOULD be. Democrats are having a hard time distinguishing themselves from Republicans. No one believes that they're in favor of fiscal responsibility, or that their position on Iraq is viable.
But if they remade themselves as the Party of Tolerance, I think they could do a lot better. They could brand the Republicans as intolerant, exclusionist, backwards. They could make gay rights into the Civil Rights struggle of the new generation that it will inevitably be and call themselves the champions of it. They could personalize all of the anti-gay policies the GOP pushes under the sterile cover of "protecting the sanctity of marriage." Put some very charismatic, very likable gay people on TV. Have them tell their stories. "Why does President Bush hate this man? Why doesn't he deserve the right to marry someone he loves? Why does the Republican Party think they're more moral than him, when he's just trying to live his life with the hand God dealt him?" The Republicans are VERY vulnerable on this front, and the Democrats could make a lot of headway pushing at it. They could also make the world a much better place.
Well, only if you follow the "watch what I say, not what I do" rule.
Bush isn't particularly interested in making Health Care more affordable unless by that you mean, "don't allow class action lawsuits across state boundaries".
Likewise, he isn't for (in the sense of watching what he does) helping the poor or making sure our environment is taken care of. He's atrocious on all levels here.
I doubt very much that Bush would be willing to stipulate Tax Reform should be based on a "People should pay according to their means more or less" policy. He's more like, "the richer you are the less you should pay" policy.
As for a foreign policy that doesn't promote lying to the people to foster support for wars of aggression... Seriously, try to say Bush is for that without laughing.
Dean is clearly on the left side of the spectrum, but BushCo is much more clearly on the *FAR* right side. The rightwingers have become so dominant that the system is falling out of balance, and there are basically only two outcomes now. One possible outcome is a swing back to the left, and Dean is of course going to be pushing for that. The stronger the swing to the right, the stronger the counterswing will have to be.
The other possible outcome would be bankruptcy and collapse. The United States has already lasted far longer than the average government, and it's showing plenty of symptoms of the kind of senility that often appears before a government collapses.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
"Gay rights are not a core Democratic issue. But they SHOULD be. Democrats are having a hard time distinguishing themselves from Republicans. No one believes that they're in favor of fiscal responsibility, or that their position on Iraq is viable."
What the Dems really need to do is convince the American people that they are more fiscally responsible than Republicans. After all, this is actually true, and it appears that the fiscal profligacy and incompetence of the Republicans isn't likely to ever end.
They also need to make sure that people know that the core values of the Democratic party are affordable healthcare, protecting american jobs, and affordable education, and that these can be achieved while being far more fiscally responsible. They also need to do a better job of pointing out that the Republicans have failed us with respect to all of those goals.
I am all for gay rights, and am disgusted by the cynical and twisted rhetoric that the Republicans use to try to use people's fear and hatred of gays to push their agenda, but I don't think that should be the focus, as it really isn't going to give that much headway. There are a lot more bigoted jerks in this country than there should be, and many of them will be more motivated to vote based on hate and fear than anything else. While the Dems should be progressive, they shouldn't be holding up their banner about an issue that they have consistently gotten bloody noses on.
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
Same people? Maybe.
But if you think Gore did NOT play a major role in creating the Internet, then you've bought into a big lie circulated by right-wing politicians starting with Dick Armey, who originally misquoted Gore.
Gore was discussing his legislative record. Anyone who looks into that record can easily see that Gore was a leader in the 1980s of a faction called the "Atari Democrats," who believed the industrial base of the United States had to shift from heavy industry to technology.
When DARPA pulled back from funding non-military uses of the fledgling TCP/IP network, Gore was instrumental in getting the National Science Foundation both the funding and the jurisdiction to create NSFNet, which became the core of the public Internet.
It is conservative economic dogma that private enterprise will make everything just peachy if we just keep the government from intervening.
But private enterprise had no incentive to create a public Internet; on the contrary, private enterprise had an incentive to create instead a series of private networks (generally running proprietary protocols).
By declaring that the nation needed an "information superhighway" for the new era and throwing government support and funding behind an open network standard, Gore was instrumental in breaking that logjam and -- yes -- creating the Internet.
It is hard these days for simple things like facts and public records to compete with the drumbeat of spin, misinformation and outright lies that has come to characterize "political discourse." Both the mischaracterization of Gore's statement about the Internet and the miscasting of the pragmatic moderate Vermont Governor Howard Dean as a screaming "ultra-liberal on social issues who is out of the mainstream and wrong for America" are examples.
Dean just plain hasn't got the right mix to make a viable party in the two party system.
He's hanging with the GOP on unpopular issues like immigration(where he basically endorses Bush's Open Borders policy) and failing to properly handle the social issues like Gun Control, Gay Rights,Drugs, Abortion(which constitutionally should all be state issues.
By definition, there are more common men than uncommon men. People win elections (well, in theory) by getting more votes than the other guys. Therefore, appealing to the common man is more important than appealing to the uncommon man. Don't shoot the messenger, kiddo.
Rob
Gay rights are not a core Democratic issue. But they SHOULD be. Democrats are having a hard time distinguishing themselves from Republicans.
In order to win, the Democrats need to co-opt some Republican issues.
Look at the most successful Democrat president of the past generation. Bill Clinton co-opted a few Republican issues. Even though he didn't do it, he ran with a promise of a "middle class tax cut" in 1992. After he pushed the "don't ask don't tell" policy for the military in 1993, rescinded the "global gag rule" for abortion and passed the Brady Act (Nee Brady Bill)+ a gun ban in 1994 the Democrats got creamed in Congressional elections. He had to RUN back to the center, so for the 1996 election, he signed the Welfare Reform bill.
They could make gay rights into the Civil Rights struggle of the new generation that it will inevitably be and call themselves the champions of it.
If they do that, they risk losing a large portion of their Black supporters. No black person wants to see Rosie O'Donnell likened to Martin Luther King.
The Republicans are VERY vulnerable on this front, and the Democrats could make a lot of headway pushing at it.
If the Democrats are not very careful, they risk a backlash. It happened last year. When the MA Supreme Court mandated "Gay Marriage" in that state, 11 other states proposes amendments to their constitutions that really turned out the conservative base. "Gay Rights" is as much to blame for President Bush's win as anything else.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You seem to be implying that Bush won the election because of rhetoric and image. Certainly that's partially true, as with any politician. However, as long as the Democrats keep thinking that, they will never win an election.
The reason Bush won is because people knew what Bush was about, knew what he stood for, and agreed with some of his ideas.
The Democratic party needs to put forth someone with a message that the people like, and positions the people agree with. It's that simple. The Democrats are having somewhat of an identity problem, and that was reflected last election.
The fiscal liberals (i.e. people who want to involve the federal government more in economic transactions) are a strong component of the Democratic party. However, for better or worse, those ideas just don't get votes. Neither do politicians who support gay marriage.
There are really two options:
(1) Try to be honest about core values, like fiscal liberalism, abortion as a civil right, gay marriage, and more involvement with the U.N. This will initially cost the Democrats many positions, but will provide an opportunity to convince people of their ways.
(2) Continue their policy of Republican-Lite. The Democrats will hold more offices, but never will they gain the dominant position in the nation. They will never be able to convince anyone that liberalism is the way to go, because they can't even stand up and say it (or they'll lose votes).
Now, I'm not a member of the Democratic party, so maybe you shouldn't take my advice. I just want a healthy political landscape because that is better for me too. If the Democrats are constantly pandering and compromising and never really come up with a main issue that really creates a following, that means we have a bunch of Democrats, none of whom actually agree with the Democratic party.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Well, as a Democrat, I remember a time when the Democrats were in control of both the White House and Congress, and I was feeling very optimistic and warm'n'fuzzy about my party, and a lot of Republicans were talking about the devastation of their party and how they had to compromise and accomodate themselves to the new political realities ... and all of a sudden the most visible Republican politician in the country was this screaming firebrand, who was stereotyped as a far right-winger (he wasn't, really, but both his supporters and his opponents seemed to like to paint him that way) who had A Master Plan to lead his party back to power.
And as a Democrat, I was rubbing my hands with glee. This guy is a nutcase, I thought. He'll take the Republicans down into permanent ruin. They're finished. I can't believe they let this guy get this much power. Heh heh heh.
That politician's name was Newt Gingrich.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.