The Strange Disappearance of Howard Dean

This is a great piece by Ari Berman of The Nation about Howard Dean. For all the thoughts in early 2005 that Dean would be an erratic chair of the DNC, he came in with a very tightly focused plan and he enacted it brilliantly. He wanted to strengthen state parties, implement the technology necessary to reach voters, and put organizers in the field throughout the country, surmising that most of life is showing up and that you have to offer Americans everywhere a choice. It succeeded pretty well.

It almost feels like ancient history, but "four years ago the Democratic Party was in a very different condition," Doctor Dean says at the beginning of his talk at the Y. Republicans had just retained the White House, gained four seats in the Senate and three in the House, and held twenty-eight governorships. Bill Frist was Senate majority leader, Dennis Hastert was House Speaker, George Bush's approval rating was at a healthy 50 percent and Karl Rove planned a "permanent Republican majority." It was "not a fun time to be a Democrat," Dean cracks.

How quickly things change. Four years later Democrats elected Obama with 67 million votes. They picked up seven seats in the Senate (with Minnesota still pending at press time)and twenty-one in the House, and they hold sixty of ninety-nine state legislative chambers. Obama's extraordinary campaign and Bush's remarkable mishandling of the country's domestic and foreign policies deserve much of the credit for the Democratic Party's resurgence, but so does Howard Dean. Before virtually any major politician, Dean not only sensed that the era of Republican ascendancy could be stopped but also how to do it, first through his trailblazing though unsuccessful presidential campaign of 2004, and then through his forceful stewardship of the party as DNC chair since 2005. "Dean gave the party a mission and a focus," says Paul Tewes, a top Obama strategist who ran day-to-day operations at the DNC during the general election. "That's a big deal when you're out of power." DNC member Donna Brazile calls Dean "one of the unsung heroes of this moment."

So unsung, in fact, that he has nothing to do now. Dean was never well-liked by the Beltway press (it's shocking how little he appeared on television despite being the DNC chair) or the Democratic establishment, and with people like Rahm Emanuel (who publicly sparred with Dean) back in power, Dean has basically been nudged out. The organizers in the states are on a leave of absence and nobody knows if that investment will continue. Obama basically emulated Dean's 50-state strategy and he might feel he can do it by himself now without any use of the former chair's strategies (I think the states like having the organizers, and the state party chairs will be very vocal in asking for it to continue).

It would be a mistake. Dean not only has a continued following among the grassroots, but he obviously has the skill to recognize how to pull off a national strategy to take back the country for Democrats and progressive values. That would come in handy as a governing strategy, don't you think?