What Howard Dean Got Right
Now that Howard Dean has exited the race (sort of), the media are busy analyzing the mistakes he made in his Icarus-like fall from grace.
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by Sean Aday, Senior Editor and Board Member, New Progressive Institute
2.24.04
Now that Howard Dean has exited the race (sort of), the media are busy analyzing the mistakes he made in his Icarus-like fall from grace. But the fact is that an unknown governor from an obscure state most Americans probably assume is part of Canada (itself considered something of a minor American province) did far better than anyone expected. This says Dean must have done more than a few things right.
The most obvious have already been written about, notably his brilliant use of the Internet and the way he lit a fire under his opponents. But it's worth remembering a few others:
The Iowa caucuses really are a stupid way to choose a nominee.
Dean was damaged in Iowa by the revelation that he once disparaged the caucus system for privileging special interests and Byzantine procedural expertise at the expense of ordinary voters. A Des Moines newscast devoted 13 minutes of its coverage one night to the shocking charge.
You would have thought Dean had called for outlawing corn. Or worse, the subsidies we pay Iowans to not grow it.
But let's face it, Iowans should have thanked Dean for taking it easy on them. Caucuses are silly. They do advantage special interests, and understanding how to work the complicated rules is more important than an individual vote.
But that's just the least of it. Here are three more reasons the Iowa caucuses are asinine:
1. Caucuses combine the mean-spirited fickleness of junior high social politics with a 70s key party, and therefore defy the quaint notion of one person, one vote. That's because you don't vote in caucuses, as you do in primaries, you team up. And once this Model UN exercise begins, being people's second choice (nearly impossible if you've been the frontrunner, as Dean discovered) is at least as important as being their first. If your candidate doesn't have the support of 15 percent of the people who came to the Mason City gymnasium caucus, well, tough luck geekboy. Now go decide which clique's phony affection you want to bask in.
How else to explain Dennis Kucinich instructing his handful of pacifistic minions to throw their lot in with the pretty southern boy that voted for the war? This was the political equivalent of the jock pretending to like the nerd long enough to copy his exam. How many nanoseconds was it before Edwards stuffed Kucinich back in a locker and forgot about him?
2. Caucuses are too complicated for normal people to understand, so you can imagine the difficulty campaign reporters have with them. Hence the quadrennial exercise in error-filled reporting that says X candidate got X percent of the vote, when in fact he got X percent of the support in the caucuses, which is a very different thing. Entrance polls showed Dean about even with Edwards, getting somewhere in the mid-20 percent range instead of the 18 percent of caucus support he ended up with at the end of the night. Imagine the different storyline if Dean came in a close third, as he would have in a primary, instead of a distant one?
3. The Iowa caucuses take place in Iowa. This has been said before, but can't be over emphasized: It's ridiculous that a few thousand people in a lily white state based on a 19th Century economy get to exercise this much say over who gets to be president. Give me California, New York, or Florida any day. (Okay, maybe not Florida but you get my point.)
Both political parties should jerk Iowa's precious first in the nation status ASAP. After all, if Iraq was smart enough to reject caucuses, why not America?
People like Maureen Dowd who think a First Lady has to be June Cleaver are not worth 5 minutes of any serious person's time.
Dowd wrote a typically adolescent column in the New York Times pouting that Dean would only grant her five minutes on the pressing question of whether his wife is subservient enough to be First Lady, and then threw a fit when the governor sensibly stood her up.
Good for him. And the sexist obsession with candidates' wives goes far beyond Dowd (though I've yet to see evidence it extends to actual voters). Dean was right in his exit speech that the country needs to have a grown up discussion about "whether a woman needs to gaze adoringly at her husband or follow her own career."
But if the country needs to have a discussion, pseudo-feminists like Dowd need an intervention.
The Book of Job is the best part of the Bible, regardless of which Testament it's in.
Okay, sure, the most cringe-worthy moment in the campaign (including for my money The Scream [that wasn't]) had to be when Dean listened to one too many advisers telling him a Democrat must speak in tongues to get votes in Dixie. Among the awkward moments that followed was one where Dean said Job was his favorite chapter in the New Testament, instead of Version 1.0.
But hey, new or old, Job is not only the most profound discussion of God's mystery in the good book, but couldn't be more relevant given the sanctimonious preaching of the Religious Right and their lackeys in the Bush Administration. People who think God is a Peeping Tom worried about how and with whom we're having sex need to review the Whirlwind's admonition to Job that humans stop arrogantly assuming they can get into His head.
The Democratic Party does need to go after the guys with Confederate Flags in their pickups.
The press picked up on this quote the one time Dean phrased it poorly, but his essential point was this: You've been voting Republican for 30 years. How's it working out for you? Not so well, right? Well, maybe it's time you got yourself a new party.
The GOP gets the votes of poor and middle class white southerners by appealing to fear - fear of minorities, fear of gays, fear of having your gun confiscated - not by actually doing anything to improve their lives.
Whereas Republicans can only offer fear, and most Democrats offer indifference, Dean pledged hope - hope for better schools, better health care, and better jobs. Most of all, he offered a seat at the Democratic table.
If caught, Osama Bin Laden should get a fair trial.
I'm sorry, what country am I living in? America, right? Okay, just checking. Look, there's no better way to demonstrate the fallacy of the Islamists' argument that America is corrupt than to say, "Hey, we'll even give this bastard a fair shake." What did Kerry and Lieberman mean by their pseudo-manly pandering attack on Dean for the comment? That the presidential response would be, "Get a rope"?
John Edwards is more electable than John Kerry.
Dean suggested as much in the waning days of his campaign, and other than money this is a slam dunk. But don't ask me, ask any Republican pollster and strategist off the record. But since Iowans bought the press' line that Kerry was electable because he served in a war 35 years ago (add that to the list of their sins), it looks like he will be able to ride momentum to the nomination. Edwards has weaknesses, but at least he has a message. Kerry's got medals and good hair. Call me crazy, but I'd rather have the guy with something to say.
You have the power to change America.
The jury's still out on this, but deep down I still think Dean is right. Granted, Deaniacs would probably say that nominating a poll-driven, issueless shell of a candidate like Kerry feels like the worst kind of rejection of Dean's message. But I take solace in the fact that because of Dean, Kerry at least has to pretend to have the guts to stand up to George Bush. Sure his record says otherwise, but maybe the lesson of this primary season is that if Democratic voters make it clear they won't stand for anything less, they can forcibly implant a spine into the party and its nominee.
The Democratic Party has become gutless and ideologically vacant.
Calling members of Congress who cave to Bush "cockroaches" probably isn't the best way to score superdelegates, but that doesn't make it any less true.
Ultimately, though, this may have been Dean's downfall. To use a religious analogy (since they are all the rage this year), Dean was too much Jeremiah and not enough Isaiah. Both prophets spoke of the need to repent, but Jeremiah was a glass half empty guy while Isaiah was brimming with Edwards-esque optimism.
But Jeremiah – and Dean – were on to something: Things did need to change. And in the end this was the most important thing Dean got right. His party had lost its way. It had become weak-kneed and unprincipled. But he was also right that Democratic voters were willing to come back in force if they only had a leader willing to stand up and fight, even if they didn't agree with him on issues like guns and welfare reform.
Dean showed that principle and passion, not pandering, could inspire and mobilize Democratic voters. Perhaps the Democratic Party, which always viewed Dean with the same disdain the residents of Jerusalem viewed Jeremiah, will recognize this and truly revitalize itself.
But this will take more than merely stealing Dean's applause lines, as Kerry has cynically done in his march to the nomination. To beat George W. Bush, the party's nominee will need to find a way to internalize the conviction and cajones Dean showed in his fiery speech at the DNC meeting early last year.
That was a man, and a message, that could inspire Democrats to don the armor and go slay the Republican beast. |
