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Tuesday, January 25, 2005

One false move, and the party gets it
Posted by Jill | 2:11 PM

Remember the tastelessly western sendup Blazing Saddles, which around the fart jokes is a pretty incisive satire on racism and bigotry in general? Remember the scene where Cleavon Little puts the gun to his own head and says, "One false move and the n----- gets it"?

That's what the Democratic Party is doing.

If you think you have seen this movie before—"Dean Against the Machine"—you have. Ever since the early days of the 2004 presidential campaign, the country doctor from the State of Ben & Jerry has been the agitating principal of a confused, fratricidal and essentially leaderless party. Then, as now, Dean inspired an outside-the-Beltway, Net-based crusade whose shock troops adored his social progressivism and his fearless opposition to war in Iraq. Then, as now, a party establishment—based in Congress, governors' mansions and Georgetown salons—viewed him as a loudmouthed lefty whose visibility would ruin the Democratic brand in Red States. Back then, insiders coalesced around Sen. John Kerry, who was stodgy but, Washington wise guys thought, a safe alternative. They trapped Dean in a crossfire in Iowa; his caucus-night Scream sealed his fate.

But the 477 DNC members who choose the party chair haven't settled on a leader of the 2005 version of the Anybody But Dean movement. For now, the front-running alternative is former congressman Martin Frost of Texas, a pro-labor moderate with a lifetime of traditional organizing who survived 13 terms in Dallas before the GOP redistricted him into oblivion. He's followed by Simon Rosenberg, a young Washington-based fund-raiser and strategist who claims to be as digitized and Net-friendly as Dean—and yet more popular than Dean among the bloggers, who are emerging as new grass-roots powers in the party. Pro-lifer Tim Roemer is also running.

In the meantime, with the DNC meeting approaching on Feb. 12, party insiders have been conducting an urgent, so far fruitless, search for a consensus Dean-stopper. The Clintons don't like Dean on substance or style, seeing him as too left and too loose-lipped. But they're being careful. Hillary, already eying a presidential run in 2008, doesn't want to alienate the possible winner; she's leaving DNC maneuvers to Bill, whose answer last month was to sound out current chairman Terry McAuliffe about remaining in the job. (He declined.) The Clintons are said to have encouraged a good friend, veteran organizer Harold Ickes, to enter the chairman's race, but he begged off, too. Party leaders approached former senator Bob Kerrey, but he told them he would rather keep his job as president of the New School University.


Read on...

What a load of horseshit. First of all, the "Dean Scream" was debunked by ABC News, but of course it's in the MSM's interest to keep the Legend of the Scream as a Mark of Dean's Derangement alive. Second of all, there is NO other candidate for head of the DNC who really stands for anything other than More of the Same. And you see where The Same has gotten us.

The ridiculous part, however, is that Dean is hardly the raging leftist the media have branded him. He's a centrist Democrat with a fiery, grassroots, accessible style, who just happened to be right about Bush's Iraq war before anyone else had the balls to speak up. They hate him because he was right.

The question about Dean and the DNC is simply whether the party is going to belong to the people or to the Washington insiders, lobbyists and operatives who have made their living off of the party coffers. The netroots proved that when you have candidates in whom people can believe, they open their wallets -- in Dean's case, to the tune of some $40 million. That's hardly chump change.

I'm skeptical about the Great Clinton Cabal that seems to be so popular in the MSM; that "The Clintons" are responsible for all the machinations behind the scenes. It's entirely possible that Hillary is gearing up for a 2008 run, but I'll believe it when I see it -- and I won't vote for her, because she's a sellout to Bush as well. The Democratic Party seems to still have this idea that running to the right is what elected Bill Clinton, and that this is what we need to do again. Au contraire, my friends, it was the sheer force of nature that is Bill Clinton that elected Bill Clinton, and some DLC hack, even Mrs. Bill, isn't going to cut the mustard.

There are some so-called "pragmatic netroots-ers" who see Simon Rosenberg as "Dean Lite" -- Dean without the baggage. From what I've seen of Rosenberg, I could keep an open mind if he ends up being the choice, but with a high degree of skepticism. Tim Roemer is Bush-Lite, and Martin Frost ran against the party he now wants to head up in his most recent failed race to keep his seat. I don't see either of these as viable alternatives for my future support of this party.

There's nothing to be ashamed of in being for working people. There's nothing to be ashamed of in believing that we are part of a world community, not just the biggest bully in the schoolyard. There's nothing to be ashamed of in believing in the Constitution. There's nothing to be ashamed of in wanting everyone to share in the pie that is America without leaving the poor out in the cold. We are right, and the Republicans are wrong. It's that simple. So let's have a DNC head who understands that. Because if you're going to give me just another flavor of Republican, I'm opting out of the process.
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