Dean wants to run the DNC. Big mistake.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

Empty Chair
Stop pretending the DNC can change the party.

If establishment Democrats still fear Howard Dean, they ought to elect him chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Not because becoming DNC chair would make Dean, as a member of the establishment, moderate his criticisms of Washington Democrats—though that's certainly true—but because Dean would exert far less influence over the future of the Democratic Party as its titular head than he would as a 2008 presidential candidate. Ed Rendell was so frustrated with his job as DNC chairman during Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign that he complained to the New Republic, "I basically take orders from 27 - year-old guys in Nashville who have virtually no real-life experience. All they've done is been political consultants living in an artificial world, and basically their opinion counts more than mine." That's the cry of the DNC chair, Washington's political eunuch.

The rest is here.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[Brundle_Fly]

1. ummm.

no

[HeilChimp]

13. can't do worse than McAwful

If the establishment Dems had listened to Howard instead of running Dukakis II for President, they would have been able to beat the chimp. We desperately need an outsider, not another candidate bought and paid for by the coorporations.

I got a message for the DLC: If you want to get Democrat votes, try running REAL Democrats for office!

DEAN FOR DNC CHAIR!

[Old and In the Way]

2. Interesting.

Dean must be making some people mighty nervous. Good. I suspect that Dean would circumvent the entrenched bureaucracy and take his case directly to the people. These people will find it's not "business as usual" with Howard in charge.

[patricia92243]

3. I would have to see be Dean MADE to shut-up. It can't be done, and that

is why the establishment don't want him. Their loss :(

[LSdemocrat]

4. Dean for DNC isn't about ideology, it's about party tactics

Reconnecting with the base
Decentralizing the DC-based party structure
Utilizing the grassroots for action, not just money

Republicans win because they have a better party structure from top to bottom. They use their base effectively (look at recruitment of evangelicals, requiring people wanting to get good seats at a Bush rally to volunteer locally, and other examples).

These are the type of things a reform minded DNC chair can do, and what the Dean for DNC movement wants.

[madfloridian]

5. Author is very snide about activists...do a search...attacks MoveOn

Here is one.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2110819/

In this article they put down MoveOn.

Feel-Good Politics
The therapeutic activism of MoveOn.org.
By Chris Suellentrop
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004, at 3:41 PM PT


"I feel good about being here," a member of the liberal online group MoveOn.org told the San Francisco Chronicle last month, during one of the more than 1,600 house parties organized by MoveOn to determine what its members wanted to focus on after John Kerry's defeat in the presidential election. The 27-year-old woman might as well have been speaking for all of the 18,000 MoveOn members who participated across the country. The ideas that emerged, at least from the San Francisco meeting, weren't very practical—"including a boycott of all ATM machines from companies that produced the electronic voting machines, a national strike and changing the economic paradigm of the country from consumption and production by just 'not buying anything,' " the Chronicle reported—but that's because MoveOn, despite all appearances, has never been about practical politics. Rather, it's an exercise in group therapy.

There are worse things to do in life than make people feel good"
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Just like the DLC tries to undermine activists and those who want the party to change. Cleverly done.

[otohara]

6. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

what exactly are you saying here?

[Lerkfish]

7. oh, you know...

the reality based conservative movement in the DLC.

I'm surprised I could actually type that without laughing.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

9. It means I'm a realist...

I look at economics, foreign policy, the military, the world, and the attitudes of the largely ignorant American electorate as it really is, not how I (or anyone) would like it to be. Usually I use the term "Reality Based Community" as a cut against Libertarians and Republicans (especially the new Neocon breed, who seem especially prone to fits of living in their own little world), but I will admit there are some Greens and Democrat-bashing Democrats who fit the bill as well.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

p.s. I'm not looking to get into a big pissing match with people in this forum. That's not what this thread I started was all about. (It was really about how the Chair of the DNC isn't that big a plum.) If you have a problem with me, send it via private message.

[Lerkfish]

10. naw, why make it private?

you want the party to go conservative. why hide that? that makes you woefully mistaken, and a traitor to all that's good and right.

[Forkboy]

12. It's saying that anyone who doesn't agree with him is obviously insane

:silly:

[el_gato]

8. DLC = Democratic Loser Committee

just look at the track record

[reprehensor]

11. Democrats for Lieberman Club

[depakid]

14. Difference is that Dean would be istening to & taking orders

from the millions who have enlisted in his grass roots campaigns... the people actually who have the power to take their country back from the spineless Dems, the worthless consultants, the K-Street bandits and last but not least- the sociopathic Republicans.