When Howard Dean’s presidential campaign floundered in 2004, many thought his days as a major player in politics were over. Four years later, Dean is credited for having rejuvenated not only his own political reputation, but also for contributing to the Democrats recent takeover of Washington.

It was more than four years ago that Howard Dean put an exclamation point of his sinking presidential campaign, with his now infamous “scream speech” after the New Hampshire primary in 2004. The speech featured a dejected Dean, coming off of a crippling second-place finish, screaming something along the lines of “yeeaargh” as he listed off a large chunk of the remaining states in the union that he was hoping to win.

Contrary to the ruminations of many pundits, the scream is not what did Dean in. The New Hampshire primary effectively ended his hopes for the nomination. Nonetheless, it was this speech that came to define Dean and his campaign.

But now, in the wake of an historic election which saw President-elect Barack Obama pull out a blowout win that included victories in traditionally red states, Howard Dean seems to have found redemption -amongst his party, its supporters and, in some instances, the media.

Earlier this week, as expected, Dean stepped down from his post as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. As speculation abounds over Dean’s future and his prospects for a cabinet level position in an Obama administration, it is worth looking into his role in this presidential election and in the Democratic Party’s campaign apparatus. Dean, by many accounts, deserves credit for two major elements of the Obama campaign and the Democratic domination of Congress: the implementation of the 50-state-strategy and his role in the growth of the “Netroots” which has grown into a crucial fundraising tool for the party establishment.

The road to the chairmanship

When Dean took the chairman job in 2005 it was viewed as a fairly benign post that provided little opportunities for its holder to shape the direction of the Democratic Party in any
meaningful way. The Party was coming off an embarrassing presidential loss to President Bush, after a lackluster campaign led by John Kerry that failed to take advantage of growing anti-war sentiment that had been fostering among the country, and would eventually catapult the Democrats into power in the legislative branch during the 2006 mid-term elections.

Dean had previously attempted to harness this energy into his presidential campaign, and for a while was quite successful. Weeks before the New Hampshire primary, Dean was leading in the polls. But, in the days before the primary, his stock started plummeting dramatically. Democrats feared Dean would be unelectable in the general election and members of the democratic establishment were resistant to Dean and went on the attack.

While Dean’s liberalism was often overstated (he is actually a fiscal conservative and a staunch drug warrior), he and his supporters represented something of a shift from the centrist, pro-business wing of the party that had dominated it for much of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Channeling the words of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, Dean would argue that he was “from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.”

But this line of thought did not sit well with the party establishment, the most powerful of whom (Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Lieberman etc …) had aligned themselves with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a group which was started in 1984 in reaction to Ronald Reagan’s blowout win over George McGovern in the 1984 presidential election. The basic goal of the DLC was to move the party to the right, especially on matters of economics and foreign policy, under the theory that this was the only way to curb Republican dominance of the federal government.

The DLC sharply attacked Dean, saying he was from “The McGovern-Mondale wing” of the Party, defined “principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest group liberalism at home.”
In July of that year, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, then- chairman of the DLC, said “The [Bush] Administration is being run by the far-right. The Democratic Party is in danger of being taken over by the far left.” They also joked about Dean’s web site following by asking: “Will he be the next dot com bust?”

President-elect Barack Obama will resign his U.S. Senate seat on Sunday to focus on his transition to the White House.

“It has been one of the highest honors and privileges of my life to have served the people of Illinois in the United States Senate,” Obama said in a statement released Thursday afternoon.

Obama’s seat will remain empty until Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich appoints a successor to fill out the remaining two years of the term. An appointment is expected by the end of the year.

Last week, Blast News reported that‚  some of Obama’s early advisers may prove disappointing for many who voted for him based on his plans for change.

Indeed, it appears the criticism may be starting to accumulate. Dean Baker, one of the few economists who predicted the housing bubble, wrote the following for The UK Guardian.

Those following the meeting of President Obama’s economic advisory committee could not have been very reassured by the presence of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, both former Treasury secretaries in the Clinton administration. Along with former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, Rubin and Summers compose the high priesthood of the bubble economy. Their policy of one-sided financial deregulation is responsible for the current economic catastrophe.

[...]

While the Bush administration must take responsibility for the current crisis (they have been in power the last 8 years), the stage was set during the Clinton years. The Clinton team set the economy on the path of one-sided financial deregulation and bubble-driven growth that brought us where we are today. (The deregulation was one-sided, because they did not take away the “too big to fail” security blanket of the Wall Street big boys.)

For this reason, it is very discouraging to see top Clinton administration officials standing center stage at President Obama’s meeting on the economy. This is not change, and certainly not policies that we can believe in.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who has been spending the last few years trying to help forge a just peace in the Middle East, said Obama will “not wait for even a month after he is president to start working on the peace process, where as you know, the previous two presidents waited till the least year they were in office before they began the peace process.”

Carter was criticized by Obama during the campaign for meeting with members of Hamas, a political party that took power in the 2006 Palestinian elections.

“I think is a very important issue, I don’t have any doubt in my mind that to find peace and security and human rights for the Palestinians and also for Israel would be a major factor in reducing the threat of terror,” Carter told CNN.

Barack Obama’s blowout victory over John McCain may come as a disappointment for Republicans, but it certainly comes as no surprise.

Joe Trippi, who managed Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004 and John Edwards in 2008, made an astute observation on C-SPAN the other day when he suggested that GOP operatives knew damn well that John McCain would lose the general election, and crafted a strategy to cope with this inevitability.

The theory, Trippi explained, is that Republicans went on the attack “" calling Obama a socialist, a terrorist sympathizer, an enemy of Israel and a baby killer “" not to appease independents in swing states, but rather, to energize the right-wing conservative base in the hopes that they would vote GOP down the ticket, and prevent possible Democratic takeovers in hotly-contested Senate races. The race was over and they were trying to cut legislative losses, so to speak.

“They were not using swing-state language” Trippi said.

And, it appears the strategy may have paid off. Republican Sen. Ted Stevens is up in Alaska , despite his fraud convictions last week; Sen. Norm Coleman is beating Democrat Al Franken in Minnesota (in a race that may be decided in a recount); Gordon Smith may hold on to Oregon and Saxby Chambliss may hold Georgia.

These were closes races, but a week ago Coleman, Smith and Stevens were all behind in the polls.

Make no mistake, this elections stands as a clear and unambiguous rejection of the GOP. But the sinister attacks that came from a desperate campaign, may have kept the Democrats from expanding the senate even further.

A young country the United States has, sadly, had a horrific history of racism. Blacks could not vote until the 1960s; were human property until the 1860s; were not truly included in the creation of our country in the 1770s; and were kidnapped, chained onto ships and enslaved in the 1600s.

Today, an African American stands at the most powerful man in the world. It is remarkable. But it must be the beginning of something new, rather than the end of something old. The fight against racism must continue on Nov. 5.

]]> http://blastmagazine.com/archive/the-news/a-new-beggining/feed/ 1 http://blastmagazine.com/archive/the-news/vermont-first-state-to-be-called-for-obama/ http://blastmagazine.com/archive/the-news/vermont-first-state-to-be-called-for-obama/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:56:27 +0000 Michael Corcoran http://blastmagazine.com/?p=5253

Unsurprisingly, the tiny state of Vermont (population 600,000) was called for Barack Obama first. The votes have not all been counted but pundits are already calling it a mammoth blowout.

It should come as no suprise that Vermont went this direction. The state. arguably the most tolerant and liberal in the nation, has a self-identified socialist in the Senate, a vibrant third party with seats in the State House, and openly supports the impeachment of Bush.

The state is known for it independent streak. 80 years ago, President Calvin Coolidge, said of the Green Mountain State, “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

There is also a curious gubernatorial race going on in the state. Incumbent Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican, is going to beat out a Democratic challenger, Gaye Symington (speaker of the Vermont House) and progressive Anthony Pollina, who is tied for Symington in second place, with about 24 percent of the vote, according to recent polls.

Interestingly, Douglas will win, but may not be re-elected right away. If he wins with less than 50 percent of the vote, the Legislature (which is dominated by Democrats) gets to choose the governor by secret ballot. I think they would likely choose Douglas, who will win with a double-digit lead, but I imagine the Douglas campaign is hoping they never have to find out.

Long lines reported already

*Reports of painfully long lines are already coming in. With record turnout expected, long lines are inevitable. But The New York Times is reporting of excessively long lines in Virginia and Pennsylvania.

From the Times:

By noon on Tuesday some precincts in Chester County, Pa., were reporting that up to half of their registered voters had already cast ballots, said Agnes L. O’Toole, the county’s deputy director of voter services. She said that voters waited in lines that lasted up to two hours. “This is above and beyond an anomaly” Ms. O’Toole said. “Our phones are off the wall.”

Also, The Times reported that even lines for early voting were excessively long in places like Kansas City and Atlanta yesterday. And things have not gotten better in KC today, according to the Associated Press.

Voters in some Kansas City precincts had to spend extra time in already long lines this morning because poll workers were given the wrong voter registration books.

Voters at All Souls Church at 45th and Walnut Streets and at a polling place in Westport were told by poll workers that they were not on the list of registered voters for that polling place. There also were unconfirmed reports of other precincts suffering similar problems.

The problems caused delays in what was already expected to be a busy day at the polls.

Following the money

*Obama has been leading in each of the last 170 or so national polls, but if you are like many who don’t trust polls, perhaps you can look to the gambling community to better gauge the odds of an Obama or a McCain victory.

BetUS Sportsbook posts the best odds on Senator John McCain with +650 odds (a $100 wager pays out $650) and Sportsbook.com posts the best odds for Senator Barack Obama at -950 odds , (a $950 wager pays out $100). People may lie to pollsters, but in offshore sports books real money is thrown around “" and they may actually be a better indicator that national polls.

As one better told the Lang Report,

Polls can be inaccurate. People may say what is politically correct, the questions may be leading, the pollsters may be biased. A pollster can still bill for an inaccurate poll. Bookmakers must make an accurate line or they lose “" period.

]]> http://blastmagazine.com/archive/the-news/early-musings/feed/ 0 http://blastmagazine.com/archive/classy-politics/mccain-suspends-campaign-to-do-his-job/ http://blastmagazine.com/archive/classy-politics/mccain-suspends-campaign-to-do-his-job/#comments Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:01:28 +0000 Heidi Buchanan http://blastmagazine.com/?p=3634

As you may or may not know, the two men currently running for President are both sitting US Senators. Therefore, it should not have been a surprise when Senator John McCain (R-AZ) suspended his campaign this afternoon and asked to postpone Friday night’s scheduled Presidential debate taking place at Ole Miss due to the current economic debates going on on Capitol Hill this week.

McCain suspended his campaign this afternoon “calling on the president to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.”

The problem specifically being the $700 billion bail out legislation that Congress has been negotiating with the White House. Senate Majority Leader claimed “It would not be helpful at this time to have them come back during these negotiations and risk injecting presidential politics into this process or distract important talks about the future of our nation’s economy. We need leadership, not a campaign photo op.”

Obama commented on the McCain decision by saying “if I can be helpful then I’m prepared to be anywhere, any time … [I] don’t want to infuse Capitol Hill with presidential politics.”

What the Obama campaign fails to realize is that until November 4, his job is not just to be campaigning, he is an elected official which requires making decisions and being a leader. Would it be too much to ask for both of them to be doing their jobs during this time of need for the American People? Both Senators are major players in the US Senate and both could contribute greatly to this debate while showing the American people their leadership skills in action rather than just claiming leadership during a campaign stump speech.

Meanwhile, the University of Mississippi is continuing preparations for Friday night’s debate. The McCain campaigned noted that he would participate in the debates “if an agreement was reached on Friday morning.” While the debate is scheduled to be focusing largely on foreign policy issues, there may be a large portion of economic debate thrown in based on the recent current events.