The Balance Sheet for Dean
washingtonpost.com
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A17
RACINE, Wis. -- Democrats have so many reactions to Howard Dean that it's impossible -- hard as pundits may try -- to pigeonhole either them or him. This is not exactly 1972 (George McGovern) or 1976 (Jimmy Carter) or 1988 (Michael Dukakis).
Nor, as Dean's most passionate supporters would have it, is opposition to Dean confined to "the Democratic establishment." Anyone who thinks there is an effective Democratic establishment probably also believes there are people on Mars, despite those great pictures we're getting of large amounts of emptiness. And worries about Dean extend all the way through the party, from right to center to parts of its left.
But every worry is matched by a hope. Bear with me as I go through the one hand/other hand calculations that pour forth from agonized rank-and-file and big-shot Democrats alike.
On the one hand: Dean has done an amazing thing by single-handedly building an activist organization and a money machine based on small contributors. This is exactly what the Democratic Party needs.
It's hard to imagine the Democrats will again have a money base courtesy of big business and the rich. These guys used to give the party money as protection when Bill Clinton was in the White House and when Democrats seemed to have a lock on the House of Representatives. Now most of that big money is firmly Republican.
Dean has shown there's an alternative. He has also created something close to the solidarity of the old party organizations. Once upon a time, people would show up at the local Democratic club to play cards, drink beer and be with their friends. The Deanies are also having fun -- going to pro games together, volunteering in community organizations and just hanging out with each other.
Dean has energized the young, as John McCain did four years ago. Something like a third of the money Dean has raised online comes from people under 30. That's astonishing. Foundations have spent small fortunes trying to figure out how to connect young Americans to politics. Dean just did it.
True, as one Wisconsin Democratic activist noted, many of the young Deanies were active in politics before he came along. They still give his campaign the feel of something new.
On the other hand: Notice how much of the above is about process. What about the candidate? Is he too arrogant, a trust-fund baby, a closet secularist who suddenly discovers religion only after the New Republic writes that his distance from people of faith will doom his candidacy? Why does he keep shooting his mouth off?
And how much do we really know about him? Could Dean sweep through the early primaries, guarantee himself the nomination -- and only then, too late, will everyone discover that the guy who won the stealth primary isn't ready for the real thing? No wonder a lot of Democrats are rooting for Dick Gephardt to beat Dean in Iowa and cheering the Wesley Clark surge in New Hampshire. Slowing Dean down will give everyone a chance to take a second look at the guy.
On the one hand again: Lots of Democrats are petrified of coming out against Dean precisely because he has built one of the few formidable organizations the Democratic Party has. Thanks to his troops, Dean -- like the bosses of an earlier age -- has earned the power to intimidate people.
And again to that other hand: Dean sure looks like a candidate for the Northeastern, educated upper middle class. Yes, his very toughness that gets trashed in the press might give him reach with the sorts of white guys who usually go Republican. But doesn't that sound like wishful thinking?
How do Democrats resolve their dilemma? Here are some tests for Dean, care of Stanley Greenberg, the Democratic pollster who just published "The Two Americas," an important book about the current deadlock in American politics. Greenberg believes the deadlock can be broken by a Democrat who combines John F. Kennedy's sense of national strength with a vision of a "100 percent America" in which opportunity and success are not confined to the privileged.
In an interview, Greenberg posed these questions about Dean: "Can he speak of faith, can he speak of God, can he speak of the culture of rural and working-class America in a way that is natural? Does he transcend the culture of the secular information world that he's part of and speak in a way that people outside that world can see as accessible?"
Those are the right questions, which Dean's awkward forays into theology and Confederate memorabilia did little to settle. Dean won't become president unless he deals with them successfully.
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