"He misspoke and corrected himself immediately," Stacie Paxton, DNC press secretary said Sunday.
For this to have happened, it MUST be the case that the rats refer to pubbies as the "white party" amongst themselves as a normal thing.
Dean is known for thinking out loud - like when he said the only people of color you’d find at a Republican meeting would be the ‘wait’ staff back in 2004. He meant it then, he means it now. That it isn’t true has no bearing on his thinking.