MORE FROM THE HOWARD DEAN POSTMORTEM

Dean's Rough Ride

From the Nation:

Dean's big mistake was in not recognizing, up front, that the media are very much part of the existing order and were bound to be hostile to his provocative kind of politics. To be heard, clearly and accurately, he would have had to find another channel.

For the record, reporters and editors deny that this occurred. Privately, they chortle over their accomplishment. At the Washington airport I ran into a bunch of them, including some old friends from long-ago campaigns, on their way to the next contest after Iowa. So, I remarked, you guys saved the Republic from the doctor. Yes, they assented with giggly pleasure, Dean was finished--though one newsmagazine correspondent confided the coverage would become more balanced once they went after Senator Kerry. Only Paul Begala of CNN demurred. "I don't know what you're talking about," Begala said, blank-faced. Nobody here but us gunslingers.

The party establishment, limp as it is, was correct to target Dean with tribal vengeance. From their narrow perspective, he represented a political Antichrist. The unvarnished way he talked. The glint of unfamiliar, breakthrough ideas in his speeches. His lack of customary deference to party elders (and to the media's own cockeyed definition of reality). What the insiders loathed are the same qualities many of us found exhilarating.

Click here.

Give Dean His Due

From the Progressive:

Still, he was by no means a perfect candidate. He had a penchant for off the cuff comments, his style could be brusque, and he at times bragged about things he had no claim on (such as when he said he was the only candidate who talked about issues of race in front of white audiences). He is partly responsible for his own undoing.

Nonetheless, he was right on the money when he said, in his withdrawal speech, that there is "an enormous institutional resistance to change." Ultimately, he could not overcome that resistance--especially from the mainstream media and the Democratic Party hacks.

The credit for Dean's success, as he himself acknowledges, lies not with the candidate but with the movement behind him. He did not drive this campaign. The people at the grassroots drove it, and they took him down a progressive, populist path he may not have charted himself.

I admire Dean's determination to keep his movement going: to, in his words, "continue the effort to transform the Democratic Party and to change our country."

Click here for more.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$