Posted on 06/08/2005 4:32:46 AM PDT by billorites
In the long run, the critical question for Democrats may turn out to be not what Party Chairman Howard Dean is doing, but what he isn't doing.
The answer to the first question is easy. What he's doing is what he has become know for: shooting from the lip. This is, after all, the man who went from front-runner to also-ran in a matter of weeks, on the strength of a series of mistakes that convinced the most liberal Democratic voters in America that the guy was not ready for primetime. The much-remembered "Dean scream" came after he lost, not before -- he was already dead, politically speaking, by then.
So it should come as no surprise to experienced Dean watchers to hear him say that most Republicans have never earned an honest living. This is what it means not to be ready for primetime. You make the sort of statements that are sure to get attention because they hit flashpoints like class warfare. It's a Republican talk show host's dream.
The reason other Democrats don't say such things is because you don't win elections this way. In point of fact, of course, what Dean is saying is wrong. Most Republicans are not coupon-clippers -- they go to work and earn a day's pay like the rest of us. And hearing Howard Dean say otherwise not only offends Republicans, but also moderates and independents who have no taste for class warfare or the strident liberalism that Howard Dean is selling.
But that's not really the problem with Dean. In seeking the party chairmanship, he promised not to run for president. I'd be willing to bet that Howard Dean will be well out of the picture by the time November 2008 rolls around, having been replaced by someone with less of an appetite for insulting would-be voters and donors.
Dean's words may be causing their share of headaches in the short run, prompting such prominent Democrats and potential candidates as Sen. Joe Biden and former Sen. and Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards to publicly diss the party chairman, but that's mostly inside baseball and hardly the stuff that is likely to move voters and decide elections.
What is far more troubling is what Dean may not be doing, and what his counterpart, Ken Mehlman, almost certainly is. According to the latest reports, Mehlman and his RNC have outraised Dean and his DNC by a factor of about three to one: $42 million to $14 million. Three top DNC major fund-raisers have left in recent weeks, among conflicting reports as to whether their departures are routine aspects of the normal transition to new leadership or a sign of the move from a focus on large donors to the grass-roots small-donor base that Dean emphasized in his own campaign and has been talking up since.
The truth is that the Democrats must do both if they are to be competitive. It doesn't matter very much what the party leader sounds off about -- there are plenty of Democrats with bigger bullhorns than his. But he is the only one whose job is to put together the technology that the 2008 candidate will need if he is to have the ability to pull off what Karl Rove did in 2004, and then some.
At the time Dean pulled out of the race in 2004, his much-vaunted website was getting one-tenth as many hits as George Bush's. Even more important, the Bush team, under the leadership of then-Rove deputy Ken Mehlman, was embarked on a sophisticated technological project that allowed it to communicate with voters in key states and key groups the same way Amazon does with regular purchasers: Understanding more than name, address and serial number, Amazon knows what I like, and what my family likes, and what other people like me like, so that when they write to me, they know how to sell to me. So did Bush.
On the Sunday before the election, Karl Rove was in a position to squeeze out every single Bush voter he needed, a capacity Democrats couldn't match.
The good news for 2008 is that while Republicans squeezed out every one of their voters, there were more Democratic votes left on the table. The bad news is that they still may be there, unless Democrats start doing what needs to be done. It isn't glamorous work. It doesn't make headlines, or primetime news. You don't need a big mouth or a high profile to do it. But if you do it right, you win.
Unlike name-calling, which wins you nothing. Not even, in the long run, continued tenure at the DNC.
Orderly.
"They all look the same."
Groomed.
"It's pretty much a white Christian party."
Are you really a doctor?
hehe sure he is...
he should be on EVERY show
Gee, so's Hilliary. So why haven't her comments drawn the same amount of coverage?
Inquiring minds want to know...
What does this mean? I earn a legitimate wage, and I clip coupons.
Estrich knows "shooting from the lip." Come to think about it, I never see her in prime time anymore.
Dean is doing a fine job.
It was all a placed bit of stagecraft from the very beginning.
Leni
Susan's desperately looking for approval and maybe to hook up with dem movers and shakers in time for the next election cycle. She has a tough road to hoe, what with the Kerry/dems exit poll numbers mess in the last election...which, in the half hour before it was shown to be completely bogus, she said angrily (on Fox), was HER idea, HER brainchild. That's two strikes: The Dukakis/tank photo op/campaign, which she managed, and those pesky exit polls which had Kerry in a landslide.
And they will stay there... in a drug induced fog.
This is another way of saying "We've got to do a better job of stuffing the ballot box."
What does this mean? I earn a legitimate wage, and I clip coupons.
I'm with you; I didn't get this. We earn an honest living AND clip coupons.
I especially like the ones for BJ's! And those home stores like BB&B and L-n-T.
"clip coupons" refers to when muni bonds were issued in certificate form with interest coupons at the bottom that one cut off (clipped) at the right time to send in to get your interest payment. muni bonds are tax free and sold in $5m increments, so those that own them are usually in high tax brackets - so the reference is not to clipping grocery coupons, but bond coupons!
I think you underestimate them.
As far as dean goes, note that the entire Elstablishment Left pull any serious candidate they might have had for this positions. What is the end result of all of this in the short term. Why it drives the lion's share of the money into Hillary's coffers; it shows just about everyone on the left who is really in charge.
Nothing could be more obvious.
No such hope for The Ostrich.
Leni
"Coupon clipper" is a now-obscure reference to people who have sufficient assets to put the money in bonds and live off the interest payments. Bonds used to come with stubs at the end called "coupons" that the person would clip off and take to the bank to cash in.
Today, the "coupon" on a bond refers to the rate of interest paid on the market value of the bond.
If anyone is a coupon clipper, it's Dean. His father was a wealthy Wall Street player.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.