looking for dems' opinions on DEAN

[timotime]

i personally dislike dean. hes too over the top, especially when he says things about wanting failure in iraq, etc. but then again, im more conservative than liberal. i want to know what the dems on soxtalk actually think of dean.

 

on a side note, here's a link to the dean scream: http://www.marriedadults.com/howarddeanscream.php

[Rex Kickass]

He's great for the party - where he stands on the platform is immaterial to me. He's establishing 50 state coordinated campaign offices to help the Democratic party be more conducive to helping its candidates win offices in every state. He's changing the way that the fundraising works for the Democratic party. They are actually getting money from small donors instead of big business again.

 

Howard Dean represents something big for the Democratic party. The actual grass roots of the party taking it back.

[NorthSideSox72]

I like a lot of his ideas, and I think on paper, he profiles nicely as the type of politician that the Dems should be modeling on. Also, he's truly excellent at building local support and grass roots campaigns, as noted above by Rex.

 

Unfortunately, the man just can't seem to express his ideas in a palatable fashion. So in short, I think his ideal spot is as the #2 guy in the party, not #1. Let him be the doer, not the talker.

[Rex Kickass]

He will be the number 3 guy for the party. He's not running for anything.

[NorthSideSox72]

He will be the number 3 guy for the party. He's not running for anything.

 

In the actual party infrastructure, he's #1. In role, I suppose, he is #3 or lower. My point is, he shouldn't be the guy on point with the public. He should be the guy who plans and executes.

[Rex Kickass]

That's the point, guy. The guy who plans and executes is #1. He should have a spokesman, but if he did - I'm pretty sure that would make things worse.

[NorthSideSox72]

That's the point, guy. The guy who plans and executes is #1. He should have a spokesman, but if he did - I'm pretty sure that would make things worse.

 

I think we've descended too far into the semantics here, and are talking right past each other. I just think Dean should DO, and not SPEAK, in his role. I'm not talking about a spokesperson for just him, I mean the spearhead guy/gal for the whole party and it's core ideals. That should be someone else. A figurehead, if you will.

[Cerbaho-WG]

He needs to learn when to shut up. If you think that the US cannot win the war in Iraq, that's fine, but saying that when you're the head of a major political party is too detrimental. As for his grass roots campaigning stuff, it sounds good but I have a major problem with never surrender a vote in any county, blah blah blah. Instead of throwing money into some place in Texas where the Republicans garner 90% of the vote, how about fighting a fight where it's managable? You only need 51% to win, not 100.

[Rex Kickass]

Here's the secret grassroots is cheap. If you throw a little money into one of these noncompetitive races in Texas and an incumbent looks a little vulnerable, the incumbent's party will throw a s*** ton of money to protect the incumbent. Money that could have been funneled into a more competitive race.

[kapkomet]

Here's the secret grassroots is cheap. If you throw a little money into one of these noncompetitive races in Texas and an incumbent looks a little vulnerable, the incumbent's party will throw a s*** ton of money to protect the incumbent. Money that could have been funneled into a more competitive race.

What does that really accomplish?

[Rex Kickass]

Why did Dick Cheney go to Hawaii? Not because they really could win the state but to make Kerry/Edwards spend some money in Hawaii when they really didn't need to.

[Rex Kickass]

The Hotline on Dean and the DNC. (This is a subscription only magazine.)

 

"Howard Dean has turned out to be the biggest surprise of the season. He's a good man. And he truly gets it." Those are the words of Charles Soechting, the TX Dem chair who when Dean announced his bid for DNC chair had Soechting grtting his teeth. At the time, the Texan worried that Dean didn't get the problems parties grappled with and certainly didn't possess the regional sympathy to figure out how to win elections in the South.

 

But now, closing in on Dean's 1st anniversary as DNC chair, Soechting has seen enough to convince him that Dean "knows what it to makes Texas truly competitive."

 

Veterans of Dem politics who work on state and local campaigns are eager to praise Dean. In part, that's because Dean has devoted the bulk of the DNC's staff, energy and time to fulfilling his chairman's campaign promise: to revitalize the Dem Party at the precinct level.

 

Dem strategists in DC often ask their colleagues: "What is Dean good for?" They moan that he's not raising as much as money as they expected or his surrogates promised; that he hasn't been Joe Trippi-like and revolutionized the party's small donor outreach; that he can't shut his liberal mouth. Dean's admirers have ready counter-arguments, but they've lacked something tangible to bat down the critics. But now, they say, the party's investment in states is beginning to pay off.

 

There are approximately 1,963 election precincts in WV. At the beginning of '05, the state Dem Party could only identify six with active Dem organizers. Twenty years ago, WV Dems abandoned their precinct-level party building operations. Part of the problem was parochial: precinct chairs didn't trust county chairs, who didn't trust the elites running the state party, who certainly didn't trust the effete liberals running the national party. The cycle of neglect desiccated what organization remained.

 

When Dean was running for chair, he took a keen interest in that state's tale of woe. And it was typical of what he saw in states across the country. So Dean promised state chairs: where the party had nothing, it would have something. The DNC would pay for organizers to spend four years in their states, training county chairs and precinct captains. In return for the paid staff, Dean would expect results -- larger voter files, more volunteers, higher vote totals. State chairs liked the message. Dems like Soechting, in TX, had complained for years that the national party saw them as ATMs and ignored them most of the time. Dean promised he'd repair the relationship between the party and its state affiliates. In large measure, he did. (Soecthing says today that the state party feels more connected to the DNC than ever before.)

 

Dean's defenders say he's making good on his pledge. The DNC has trained 136 new organizers and sent them to 30 states, and by the end of 3/06, party officials say every state's precinct training program will be up and running. In WV, the party now employs four full-time organizers. Recalcitrant county chairs are warming to their presence; one small county that had zero precinct captains in 2004 has twelve today.

 

"That may not seem like a huge step," says Parag Mehta, the DNC's director of training, "but in that party of West Virginia, where Democrats were afraid to put up yard signs for fear of being taunted, suddenly, there's a Democratic presence."