Patrick Ruffini has -- in his own words -- a provocative post that argues Sarah Palin might be destined to become a Howard Dean-like figure, whose example "provides a context in which Sarah Palin could lose the election, but ultimately win the party and pave the way for a conservative victory in the future." Ruffini writes that "Dean emerged when the Democratic Party was in full capitulation mode" and had his candidacy destroyed by the party's elders only to rise, phoenix-like, to chairmanship of the DNC. Such a transformation, Ruffini suggests, was no accident -- if Dean hadn't existed, he would have had to have been invented to spearhead the emerging muscle of the Democratic base.
But to link Sarah Palin to all this is to seriously misunderstand the differences between Dean's legacy and whatever Palin will bequeath to the conservative base. First, Dean's model of fundraising was arguably his greatest contribution to how Democrats finance their candidates. John Kerry built upon this model but clearly the true heir is the fundraising juggernaut of Barack Obama. Sarah Palin might bring in the crowds and the money, but she isn't fundamentally changing the way conservatives fund candidates; instead she is merely a proxy meant to make conservatives open their wallets in the first place.
Second, Dean's rise to DNC chairmanship is overshadowed by the strategy he implemented once there. Dean argued successfully that his 50-state strategy was what was needed to help Democrats win, not just in the next election cycle, but down the road, to build up the state parties and field a bench of new talent. Palin hasn't shown any interest in doing this. In fact, her career seems entirely inwardly focused. Dean ran for president on essentially a single issue -- ending the Iraq war -- and ended up leading his party, whereas Palin didn't jump on the Republican ticket for any particular issue other than the promotion of Sarah Palin.
--Mori Dinauer
