The Surprising Rebirth of Howard Dean

Mother Davis flips her calendar back and forth as she muses,

It was just a little less than one year ago that Howard Dean’s strong campaign to become the Democratic nominee for President began to falter. A few slips of the tongue, a silly sounding scream, and a campaign committee staffed with arrogant political insiders poisoned the populist strength of the former Vermont governor’s rise to the top of the anti-Bush pack. The opening created by his fall enabled Senator John Kerry to grab the nomination, and follow-up with a campaign that was high in militaristic rhetoric, and missing a genuine critique of Bush’s war and security state machines.

It was about a month before Governor Dean began his public slip that I began to question the ongoing strength of his campaign. I watched as Joe Trippi took a grassroots campaign and converted it into a funnelling scheme to bring profits to advertising agencies. I saw stolid union representatives and Democratic Committee chairs usurp the leadership roles that grassroots activists had been carrying on with exceptional competence. As the establishment rallied around Dean, it smothered the people who had made his candidacy a success.

The secret is that Howard Dean never really made his success. The Democratic liberal base made Dean a success. They chose him, and when they were shut out by the jealous Democratic Party establishment, Dean’s campaign fell apart.

I was disappointed to see this happen, and for a long time I wrote off Howard Dean as a flash in the pan. However, I have also watched over the last year as the grassroots activists that supported Howard Dean’s presidential campaign have resucitated its skeleton and reworked it into the beautiful and powerful progressive action network: Democracy for America.

While the campaigns of all the other Democratic candidates have faded away, and John Kerry has been caught trying to keep millions of dollars donated for his 2004 campaign to use for later, Democracy for America has survived the 2004 election cycle, and emerged as a strong organization with solid footing to resist the nationalist policies of the Republicans when no one else will.

Howard Dean ought to be proud of this achievement. Above all the other Democratic candidates, including John Kerry, he has demonstrated a lasting commitment to the progressive ideals that 48 percent of Americans hold dear. When other Democratic politicians are urging a pathetic and cowardly agenda of collaboration with the Republican elites in Washington D.C., Howard Dean is calling upon progressive America to hold true to its ideals.

In a speech last week, Howard Dean spoke eloquently of the need for a principled progressive resistance to the Republican agenda:

Here in Washington, it seems that after every losing election, there’s a consensus reached among decision-makers in the Democratic Party is that the way to win is to be more like Republicans.

I suppose you could call that philosophy: if you didn’t beat ‘em, join them.

I’m not one for making predictions — but if we accept that philosophy this time around, another Democrat will be standing here in four years giving this same speech. we cannot win by being “Republican-lite.” We’ve tried it; it doesn’t work…

There’s only one thing Republican power brokers want more than for us to lurch to the left — and that’s for us to lurch to the right

What they fear most is that we may really begin fighting for what we believe — the fiscally responsible, socially progressive values for which Democrats have always stood and fought.

I’ll give this to Republicans. They know the America they want. They want a government so small that, in the words of one prominent Republican, it can be drowned in a bathtub…

We need to be able to say strongly, firmly, and proudly what we believe, because we are what we believe.

Howard Dean is right. He was right when he called upon the Democratic Party to celebrate its grassroots activists one year ago, and he’s right when he says it now.

Howard Dean is competing to become the new chair of the Democratic National Committee. Of all the candidates for the job, Dean is the only one who is making any effort to appeal to the Democratic rank and file. All the rest are content to work for the job by holding meetings with arrogant power holders behind closed doors.

I don’t know whether Howard Dean will succeed in this effort. He is by no means a favored Democratic Party insider. However, it is clear to see that Howard Dean has no intention of going away. He is intent on continuing to fight for progressive America, whether or not it is a presidential election year.

Keeping an eye on Dr. Dean for 2008,
Mother Davis