He’s doing OK. The only reason he’s getting so much attention is that he’s Howard Dean. His position is almost irrelevent. Were he not DNC, he would still be making speeches and raising money/conciousness, and the Tighty Righty would still be howling with outrage at all the outrage, etc. etc. (Cue “The Scream”). After all, Ward Churchill can only be inflated so far, eventually they have to talk about something else. Ain’t gonna be our glorious success in Iraq and Afghanistan, that’s for sure.
The momentum is shifting, but not because of Dr. Dean, but Dr. Dobson, Dr. Frist, and thier merry band of rabid slugs.
Wasn’t it pretty much the same in 2004, when the Dems were energized and going all gangbusters? Problem is, the Pubs will always raise more money than the Dems so long as their base is richer than the Dem base. Don’t compare Dem fundraising under Dean’s leadership to the Pubs’ fundraising, compare it to Dem fundraising under previous party leaders.
Well, I’m disappointed in the OP. Very much so. I disabused you of some of this nonsense only this morning with this post here. It appears that it may have even prompted this very thread, at least in part. However, you continue to spout much the same nonsense.
As others may read in the link, Howard Dean is setting records for off-year fundraising. Comparisons between fundraising now and last year, during the run up to a presidential election, are completely inappropriate in terms of estimating relative performance.
The link I gave you also shows Gallup poll numbers that show Dean’s approval rating among the general population going up over time, not down. So it is hard to support an argument that his “hot rhetoric” is chasing anyone away.
But you knew all of this already, and still you created this OP? Wow.
Further, as I said in the link, it’s great to have money, sure, but it doesn’t seem to be helping the Republicans very much, since not only are they falling on their ass repeatedly as if they were trying to run on ice in terms of their own agenda (Schiavo, filibuster, Social Security) but they are also falling like stones in terms of public polling. I realize you said that you don’t put stock in polls, but you should put stock in the actual effectiveness of your party, right? Love to tell you that they are presently eating a big shit sandwich. At least they have a bunch of money to pay for dessert.
I just felt the subject was coming up enough to warrant its own thread. How you handle your disappointment is your own business - although, as a Democrat, you should have had lots of practice by now.
And I just reported in this thread that it is actually Ken Mehlman that is setting records in off-year fundraising, and big records at that.
Now, an apples-to-apples comparison is handy at times, 'tis true, but sometimes you have to compare that apple to other things, Can’t be helped. And if you want to state that Dean is doing better than any Democrat before on that score, that’s fine. I can, though, ask if that’s enough.
If the Democrats lose more ground in 2006, will you be satisfied that at least the fundraising had improved, and keep going forward with the same game plan? If not, why wouldn’t an examination of that plan before the election be wise?
And isn’t that in and of itself an interesting observation. Why is this subject coming up? Why are Novak and Drudge and Mr. Moto raising a charge (based on dubious interpretations of the data) repeatedly about Howard Dean at this point?
But your point, originally, was that fund-raising under Dean “has completely fallen apart.” You’ve softend that here to “the results don’t look promising.” How so? Because we aren’t outpacing RNC efforts? Okay, show me when we have in the past, and tell me why I should be so disappointed with record breaking numbers?
I continue to be mystified by conservatives memories and faith in the persistence of their political success, as if it is somehow independent of real world events. I presume, but don’t know, that RNC fundraising efforts outpaced DNC efforts in 1992 and 1996, but the results were Democratic victories. I presume, but don’t know, that Democrats have had less money than Republicans for quite some time, yet their congressional domination has been for a scant decade.
Will you be pleased with having more money in 2006 but losing seats?
Well, I will admit that I am a hard-line conservative and thus have a biased view of Dean, but it seems to me that he is doing rather poorly. I can point to several statements in his Meet the Press appearance last Sunday as examples of this.
The first sentence is simply emotionally charged political spin. The second sentence is either true or false depending on who you ask and on what polls you are using to back up the statement. I can go out on the web now and find vastly different results for “supporting privatization”. It’s too facile to sum it up in the way Dean does here. Later, he goes on to say that the Democratic agenda for Social Security is “leaving Social Security alone, except for the tweaks that may be needed to fix it.” Huh? His main beef about Bush’s fix for Social Security is that Bush “wants to privatize it.” He never mentions the fact that people have a choice on where to put their money, and that many of the other retirement accounts on Capitol Hill are similarly privatized, but here my bias is showing quite clearly, so I will desist.
I’ll not quote all of his “argument” against the constitutional/nuclear option of changing the filibuster rules, but he basically said that he supported up or down votes (“So then what’s the problem, Mr. Chairman?” I would like to know.), and that the Democrats are basically doing the same thing the Republicans did when they were in the minority (except that the Republicans bottled the nominations in committee as opposed to filibustering). So, on closer review, he had no argument.
He made a huge blunder when he confused Saddam Hussein for Osama Bin Laden, stating
Bush would have been crucified for a similar mistake, but I have not even seen it mentioned from any source other than the conservative blogs.
He went on to refuse to apologize for saying that Tom Delay should “serve his jail sentence”, but never addressed Russert’s salient point that Dean earlier (circa 2004) said that we shouldn’t pre-judge Bin Laden. He just waffled. Not that I’m surprised. He is, after all, a politician. Further, he refused to apologize for mocking Limbaugh’s drug addiction. I am no fan of Rush, and there is certainly plenty of things to make fun of him for. But…the leader of the DNC? I just don’t think it’s wise. And he’s still saying it.
He went on to say other “brilliant” things, including “Our [Democrats] moral values, in contradiction to the Republicans’, is we don’t think kids ought to go to bed hungry at night.” Yes, Dean. You have crystallized it. Republicans think kids should go to bed hungry at night. There aren’t enough rolleyes in the world.
His view of African Americans in the Democratic party is one I can almost get behind.
Almost. He is certainly right about the way the Democrats abuse the African American vote, claiming they will fight for them and then just ignoring them. The only point of disagreement I have is with the “we were so helpful during the civil rights era”. I don’t really view weak support and barely voting for the civil rights bill as “being helpful”, but to each his own. Biased source, but facts are facts
I could go on, but I won’t. Suffice to say, I’m just glad he’s not the chairman of my party.
Er…I’m unsure why you think that most of your points about Dean would be considered bad by Democrats Psycho Pirate…who would be the ones to judge how Dean is or isn’t doing. I seriously doubt that the majority of the points you made would be ones that Democrats would consider ‘bad’.
I agree that it seems Dean is a more effective fund raiser than those who came before him in the job…but fund raising isn’t everything. If Dean is indeed not going after the minorities agressively (especially this theoretical ‘latino’ group I keep hearing about) but ceeding that to the republicans, then I don’t think he’s doing a good job. To me the proof will be in the pudding…we’ll see in '06 how the Democrats rebound from this last election and if they make any additional gains, or if the Republicans continue to advance. Personally I feel there is a lot of amunition out there for the Dems to us against the Pubs…but WILL they use it, and how effective will they use it? I don’t know. To me it looks like the Republicans are screwing up by the numbers…but that the Democrats don’t seem to be able to do anything about it.
Where is a nice strong third party when you need one?
Let’s get real here, folks. Complaining about how the Chairman of a political party is doing is like complaining about how poorly an executive producer may have done in his work on some movie. In the end, no voter cares about what the hell Lee Atwater, Ron Brown, Howard Dean, or Haley Barbour said or did.
Candidates win and lose elections, not party chairmen. I maintain that you could have put a sickly chimpanzee in as head of the RNC in 2003, and Bush’s devistating attacks on Kerry in the spring of 2004 still would have won the election for him.
Whether or not Dean is doing a “good” job is about as important to politics as whether Paul Bearer was a “good” manager for the Undertaker in WWF wrestling.
On the contrary, Bush has confused Hussein and bin Laden more than once in the past, most notably in the first Presidential debate against Kerry. There were some rolled eyes, but he was hardly crucified, as evidenced by the fact that you don’t even remember it. That’s because it was a pretty obvious slip of the tongue, as it was for Dean.
Well, now, hold on, Doc. We ought to give friend Moto’s suggestion a fair examination. I probably would be entirely satisfied with resignation in disgrace, Nixon-style, but I would be willing to consider more extreme sanctions. As an example to the younger generation.
(Conservative National Review Editor) Richard Lowry’s spin on Dean’s May 22nd appearance on Meet The Press: Just Another Dean Disaster - Nastier & More Shaky On The Facts Compared To The Disasterous 6/2003 Russert Interview
[quote]
[ul][li]Dean, reading from a list of DeLay’s crimes, “I’m not judging him…there’s a reasonable chance this may end up in jail…but we’re not going to stoop to the kind of divisiveness (of the GOP)…We ought not lecture each other about ethical shortcomings”[]WMD in Iraq: “I thought there probably were…” but “we (including Kerry) were told that by the president” (even though Kerry was on the record talking about Iraqi WMD prior to Bush’s election)[]“I don’t know anybody who thinks abortion is a good thing” and “I’d prefer to see medical practice boards around the country, state by state–because people do believe different things about this in different states. I’d prefer to see medical practice boards around the country set ethical guidelines for abortion” (Which would require the overturn of Roe v Wade)[]He was off by $5000 on the SSI tax cap[]"…The president continues to make to this day that Osama bin Laden had something to do with supporting terrorists that attacked the United States. That is false." (Oops, he mean Saddam).“Abortion has gone up 25% since GWB took office” (Unsubstantiated - no data to back-up the claim)[/ul][/li][/quote]
First of all, Psycho Pirate, let me say that I agree with you fully that Dean bombed on “Meet The Press.” I like Dean quite a bit, and I could not have been more annoyed with his non-answers and fumbling.
But that has no bearing on his abilities as a DNC Chairman. None. The only standards a party chairman can ever be judged upon are fundraising and winning elections. The party chairman is usually not “the message guy.” Leave that to the leaders in Congress or, if a party is so blessed, the president.
Dean is beating his predecessor, who was a money-raising machine, in the fundraising arena. I would also guess, and I admit this is waaaay early in the game, that the Democrats will make gains in the House, though there’s no way they’ll win it before the next round of redistricting. Is this due to Dean? I don’t know. With Social Security and Schiavo, the Republicans aren’t exactly helping themselves out right now in the eyes of the public.
As for your “facts” from a biased source, you know as well as I do that many of the Democrats who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act would be Republicans today. In fact, some of them became Republicans. At that point, Strom and the boys were DINOs – Democrats In Name Only.
This is one of the most disingenuous OPs I’ve seen in a while. Mr. Moto, you could give a flying fuck about helping the Democrats win elections, you just want them to become more like Republicans so that when the country eventually realizes how stupid they’ve been, you won’t be faced with true liberal. Aren’t we expected to debate honestly in this forum?
You know what? We don’t need your advice. Hell, I can tell you exactly how the Democrats could win every election for the next 10 years. We simply stick with our current platform, except we come down hard against the gays. The Dems would probably have enough seats to override a filibuster if we did that.
There’s just one problem. That would suck. Unlike the Republican leadership, who like to pretend that they don’t know that they’re appealling to the most racist members of this country, I’d rather lose every election in every state before I’d use bigotry to win elections.
Here’s the meat of it all (and finally some honesty). It doesn’t make one whit of a difference what the Democratic Party does, how they do it, or who they do it with. You want them to lose.
