Michael Tomasky: Dean as a revolutionary
It's an old rule of history that revolutionaries make bad governors (small "g"). The skill set required to storm the Bastille isn't the one needed when it comes time to involve oneself in the mundane tasks of running a government. Among many others, Robespierre, Lenin, and, in a less malign form (in that he mostly refrained from the wanton butchery of his foes), Daniel Ortega have all taught us this lesson.
So where does this leave Howard Dean? Within the parameters of our comparatively civil democracy, he was certainly a revolutionary. And while he will not have the chance to govern, he can -- if he does it adroitly -- move into a new phase in which he becomes a lasting force inside the Democratic Party. (Yes, Howard Dean can become a Democratic insider!) In his exit speech, he spoke of turning Dean for American into an organization that will somehow or another serve as the progressive conscience of the party.
A nice idea. I wonder, though, whether Dean isn't overestimating his power just a little bit. What leverage did he really amass? He didn't win a state. He didn't even come particularly close in single state. He was forced to leave the race -- let's face it -- pretty early, and he didn't even win half a million votes. (in 1988, Jesse Jackson, the last serious leverage candidate, scooped up 7 million votes during the primary season.) So Dean has no serious, tangible leverage to make the party do anything.
It could be argued that his 700,000-strong base of supporters amounts to leverage. But it's far from clear they'll all follow his lead -- many of those backers, despite the media stereotypes of them, were just ordinary rank-and-file Democrats who thought he would win; and now that he's out, they'll simply choose between the two who are left. The only leverage he has right now is media coverage, which he and his technologically adept followers know how to generate; but as the media focus on John Kerry and John Edwards, that, too will fade.
This means that Dean, if he really wants to have a say in the Democratic Party's direction, needs to find a new form of leverage. It seems to me there are two ways to do that: first, be what all good primary losers should be -- a good soldier -- and help Kerry or Edwards in any way they ask (and stay out of the way, if that's their request); and second, put in a little face time in Washington to show Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi and the others that, well, he didn't really mean all that … stuff.
But anyway, Dean did his revolutionary's job, and he did it, for the most part, ingeniously. Democrats, powerful ones and regular ones, should remember that and honor him.
That, plus I'll miss seeing Judy.
Michael Tomasky is the Prospect's executive editor.
Simon Rosenberg: Dean should complete the $100 revolution.
Hats off to Howard Dean. While he didn't win, he imagined and implemented a new and more compelling vision, one that again put average Americans at the very center of politics.
To ensure that this powerful legacy lives on, I hope that Dean dedicates himself this year to implementing the $100 revolution he began -- in the Democratic Party. His vision of a vibrant, active community of 2 million citizens giving $100 each to beat George W. Bush is not only important for our fortunes this year, it's a vital and necessary step to help modernize and strengthen progressive politics over the long haul.
By helping the Democratic National Committee (DNC) build a new community, Dean can: • Hasten the party's successful transition to a hard-dollar, low-dollar politics, as is required by the new campaign-finance laws.• Align our politics with our policies. For too many years the policies of the Democratic Party have been targeted to the middle class while its politics were targeted to the rich. In the new post-Dean party, when we tell people that we cannot win without their participation, their passion, and their money, we mean it. Today our policies and our politics are aimed squarely at the middle class, making us much more effective champions of average Americans.
So, Howard Dean, you have inspired many with your powerful message and your vision for a party once again made and funded by regular old Americans. Come to the DNC and complete the $100 revolution. Help us imagine and build a Democratic Party that can compete and win in the Internet age -- and ensure that the revolution you began changes politics forever.
Simon Rosenberg is President of the New Democrat Network.
Garance Franke-Ruta: Dean reinvigorated American democracy.
A common criticism of Howard Dean's bid for the presidency was that it ultimately became a campaign about a campaign instead of about a country. After the initial success of Joe Trippi's innovative Internet strategy, a profusion of further procedural stories overwhelmed Dean's original message of fiscal conservatism and health care for all. And standard-issue campaign-management techniques -- We're going to knock on doors! We're going to call people! -- became the subject of a romantic cult.
Yet this critique fails to recognize the ways in which so-called process issues embody deeper philosophical questions about what constitutes appropriate governance in a free society. How we govern ourselves -- who has power and who can use government power to improve their lives -- may be a process question. But it's also the one this country was founded on. Americans did not fight against the British for universal health care, gay rights, and a 50-cent increase in the minimum wage. They fought for the freedom to be self-governing.
If Dean did not stand behind an innovative policy platform, he nonetheless stood behind an innovative approach to reinvigorating American democracy. For that, everyone -- and not just Democrats -- owes him a debt of gratitude.
Dean went around the country and woke people up. He never quite figured out what to say to this slightly groggy, curious electorate after that, but his wake-up call will not easily be forgotten.
Dean can actually have more influence in the future as a party outsider. Legislation is, by and large, a lagging social indicator, and most politicians merely work to ratify and codify what society or various interest groups have already agreed on. Dean's history as a moderate governor in Vermont only proves that rule. But as a campaigner, he became something he hadn't been: a true leader. And it was this that, in a way, made him unfit for governing in our current system.
There's a reason that politicians are cautious about their words: They have to be in order to win election. Dean said what he thought, and that both raised him up and brought him low. But it will be extremely valuable to the Democratic Party in the future to have someone who can continue to say what he thinks without fear. If there is one part of Dean's message that will live on, it is this: Have no fear. Stand up and be proud of what you believe. Someone needed to say it, and he did.
If Dean continues to play the role of truth teller, as I hope he does, the party should be grateful to have him.
Garance Franke-Ruta is a senior editor at the Prospect. She writes the Prospect's Campaign Dispatches blog.
Nick Confessore: Dean gave the party a new operating system.
Had I been voting in one of the early Democratic primaries or caucuses, Howard Dean would not have been my first choice -- or even my second or third. But I think the Democrats should be very glad he ran. For all its many faults, Dean's candidacy was a gift to the Democrats in several ways. One was to teach the other candidates that it was possible to criticize President Bush -- even very strongly -- and not only live to tell the tale but prosper. Without Dean, the other candidates, and the party as a whole, would never have begun to find their voice and to develop a coherent response to the Bush administration's many failures and blunders in Iraq.
Another was to bring home to many Washington Democrats the inherent weakness of their party. Dean's insurgency put a scare into what we call the Democratic "establishment," revealing just how pathetic and useless that establishment really is and spurring a number of its members to rethink their strategy and approach to politics in the age of Republican rule.
But Dean's most important contribution was to show the Democrats how to organize a political party in the postindustrial age. To use a software analogy, every political campaign has both applications (policy proposals) and an operating system (volunteers, professional staff, fund raising, and ground organization). Dean didn't give the Democrats any new applications. He put forward the least radical health-care proposal of any of the five major candidates running before New Hampshire. His ideas to expand federal aid for child care and college tuition were not much more than Clinton retreads. His best-known proposal -- repealing even the middle-class tax cuts passed by Congress in 2001 and 2002 -- was notably only for its stupidity, and he likely would have dropped it had he stayed in the race.
Dean's legacy, in other words, is not an ideological one. But he did give the Democrats a new operating system. Until now, every other campaign, Republican or Democratic, has run on some version of Windows -- the model in which candidates use direct mail and other 1970s-era innovations to raise millions of dollars, largely from wealthy individuals, and hire consultants to communicate with ordinary voters through television ads. Republicans have always been more successful with this model than Democrats. (You could say Democrats ran on Windows 3.1, while GOP candidates had long ago upgraded to XP.) They were better at media, far better at direct mail, and -- thanks to long domination of the White House -- had more experienced and adept campaign consultants at the presidential level. The passage of McCain-Feingold, which cut off soft money (which Democrats could raise as well as Republicans) and raised limits on hard money (which most Democrats can barely raise at all) has only solidified the GOP's advantage.
Dean's campaign, as I am not the first to note, was the political equivalent of Linux. That's true both literally -- like Linux, Dean's campaign was "open source," allowing ideas and innovations to filter up from grass roots and permeate the entire operation -- but also in the sense that it was a radical departure from the old campaign model. By harnessing existing information technologies to lower the cost of organizing a genuine grass roots and raising small-dollar contributions from them, Dean gave the Democrats a glimpse of how they can rebuild their party infrastructure, reconnect with average Democrat voters in a powerful, organic way, and raise enough money to be competitive again. (By my lights, it's an updated and more progressive version of the old Democratic machines of the pre-reform era, which knit grass-roots voters into the party at a granular level and connected them via strong state parties to the Democratic elite in Washington.)
Ideology aside, the Democrats will not become a viable national party again unless they can change the ground rules of politics. And Dean's new operating system is the first step forward. Now that he's dropped out of the presidential race, Dean should work to upgrade the rest of his party from Windows to Linux, and to make the energy and enthusiasm of his supporters -- many of them, it appears, first-time voters or even first-time Democrats -- a permanent feature of Democratic campaigns.
I'm one of the few people who think that DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe has done a pretty good job. And I think his efforts at building a Democratic-voter database, as unsexy and largely unappreciated as it is, will prove hugely important in 2004 and 2008. But at best, his work upgrades the DNC to a better version of Windows. It won't reinvent the party.
For now, Dean should stay on the campaign trail, form a "527" or a political action committee, put Joe Trippi in charge of it, join hands with the network of progressive organizations quarterbacking voter registration and outreach for 2004, and continue toward his goal of raising $100 million to defeat President Bush.
And Washington Democrats, instead of punishing those who backed Dean's candidacy, should work to bring Dean and what remains of his army into the party fold.
Nicholas Confessore is an editor at The Washington Monthly and a senior correspondent of The American Prospect.