Nbadan
01-24-2005, 05:07 AM
Jan. 31 issue - Within hours of George Bush's Inauguration, everyone was playing his assigned role. Republicans, happily united, were dancing the night away at glittering balls in downtown Washington. Democrats, meanwhile, divided into familiar warring camps: for and against Howard Dean. In Burlington, Vt., Dean and hundreds of fans gathered for an "un-Inauguration"—and in support of the former governor's quest to become the new chairman of the Democratic Party. In Georgetown that same evening, hordes of insiders partied at the stately home of Mark Penn, the Clinton family pollster, where they gripped and grinned with Bill and Hill, cheered each other up—and fretted about Dean's assault on party headquarters. "There was a ton of positive energy at the house," a guest said later, "except for the fear and loathing of Dean."
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.
Last week the search for a surefire Dean-stopper (if there is one) reached new levels, NEWSWEEK has learned, with several governors—among them Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Bill Richardson of New Mexico—trying to gin up a last-ditch plan: let Dean be chairman, but confine his role to pure nuts-and-bolts duties by layering him with a new "general chairman" spokesman for the party. They abandoned the idea after realizing that they didn't have the votes to change the rules—and because the person they wanted to take the new role, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, told them she had no interest.
That left the anti-Dean forces with only one clear strategy: recycling the long list of his provocative statements. Among them: that we shouldn't judge Osama bin Laden until he has a jury trial; that America won't always have the strongest military; that "if Bill Clinton could be the first black president, I can be the first gay president." The ABD forces were also pointing reporters to an off-the-record Harvard seminar in November, at which Dean is rumored to have facetiously suggested that Democrats leave Wyoming rather than put up with anti-gay attitudes there. (A Dean spokeswoman says the governor remembers discussing the Matthew Shepherd case, but not the specific remarks about Wyoming. "In any case, his view is that the Democrats need to compete everywhere, including there.")
As for Dean, he is playing it cool and trying to soothe fears within the citadel he may soon occupy. He has vowed not to run for president in '08 if elected chair—a kind of backhanded bribe that may induce many DNC members to vote for him. The incendiary quotes are old news, his advisers insist; besides, Dean will concentrate on organization, not provocation. He and Bill Clinton have talked—at length, sources say—and Dean has hired shrewd Washington hands to help him, including Jim Jordan, Kerry's first presidential handler. Leaner and less mean than in the old days, Dean is wooing DNC members in one-on-ones. "He is giving a lot of 'warm fuzzies' to people," a Democrat says. A warm and fuzzy Howard Dean? It sounds improbable, but it may be the winning story line of the next Democratic movie.
MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6857146/site/newsweek)
The Clintonistas, the Kerry Camp, the Right Wing of the Democratic Party, the so called "New Democrat Network" (read Neo Libs - who are all on board and united with the NeoCons) who are working feverishly to marginalize Dean in every way possible in order to put their man, Simon Rosenberg (pro-war in Iraq, Iran, Syria etc) in as chair.
They may succeed. The Neo-Libs have their hit squad all over the internet and the media (radio, TV, Cable) to pull this off and as evidenced in the past two weeks, they will NOT waver.
There will be no boundaries or limitations on how far they will go to silence Howard Dean and dis-empower the Progressives and more traditional Liberals of the party.
If the PDA (Progressive Democrats of America) does not organize effectively with DFA against the elite power structure of the professional election losers, the DP will further fuel and embolden the new elected-theocratic state, which is now what we have ruling America.
It's time for a populist resistance to rise against the machinations of the Clintonistas and the rest of the Bushivek Crime Family boot lickers and send them all packing.
Now.
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.
Last week the search for a surefire Dean-stopper (if there is one) reached new levels, NEWSWEEK has learned, with several governors—among them Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Bill Richardson of New Mexico—trying to gin up a last-ditch plan: let Dean be chairman, but confine his role to pure nuts-and-bolts duties by layering him with a new "general chairman" spokesman for the party. They abandoned the idea after realizing that they didn't have the votes to change the rules—and because the person they wanted to take the new role, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, told them she had no interest.
That left the anti-Dean forces with only one clear strategy: recycling the long list of his provocative statements. Among them: that we shouldn't judge Osama bin Laden until he has a jury trial; that America won't always have the strongest military; that "if Bill Clinton could be the first black president, I can be the first gay president." The ABD forces were also pointing reporters to an off-the-record Harvard seminar in November, at which Dean is rumored to have facetiously suggested that Democrats leave Wyoming rather than put up with anti-gay attitudes there. (A Dean spokeswoman says the governor remembers discussing the Matthew Shepherd case, but not the specific remarks about Wyoming. "In any case, his view is that the Democrats need to compete everywhere, including there.")
As for Dean, he is playing it cool and trying to soothe fears within the citadel he may soon occupy. He has vowed not to run for president in '08 if elected chair—a kind of backhanded bribe that may induce many DNC members to vote for him. The incendiary quotes are old news, his advisers insist; besides, Dean will concentrate on organization, not provocation. He and Bill Clinton have talked—at length, sources say—and Dean has hired shrewd Washington hands to help him, including Jim Jordan, Kerry's first presidential handler. Leaner and less mean than in the old days, Dean is wooing DNC members in one-on-ones. "He is giving a lot of 'warm fuzzies' to people," a Democrat says. A warm and fuzzy Howard Dean? It sounds improbable, but it may be the winning story line of the next Democratic movie.
MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6857146/site/newsweek)
The Clintonistas, the Kerry Camp, the Right Wing of the Democratic Party, the so called "New Democrat Network" (read Neo Libs - who are all on board and united with the NeoCons) who are working feverishly to marginalize Dean in every way possible in order to put their man, Simon Rosenberg (pro-war in Iraq, Iran, Syria etc) in as chair.
They may succeed. The Neo-Libs have their hit squad all over the internet and the media (radio, TV, Cable) to pull this off and as evidenced in the past two weeks, they will NOT waver.
There will be no boundaries or limitations on how far they will go to silence Howard Dean and dis-empower the Progressives and more traditional Liberals of the party.
If the PDA (Progressive Democrats of America) does not organize effectively with DFA against the elite power structure of the professional election losers, the DP will further fuel and embolden the new elected-theocratic state, which is now what we have ruling America.
It's time for a populist resistance to rise against the machinations of the Clintonistas and the rest of the Bushivek Crime Family boot lickers and send them all packing.
Now.