Howard Dean Cover Story in NY Times Magazine: "The Inside Agitator"

[Totally Committed]

The Print title:

It's His Party?
Howard Dean and the Creative Destruction of the Democratic Establishment



The Online title:

The Inside Agitator
By MATT BAI
Published: October 1, 2006

"Howard Dean is the only guy in Washington just now who is talking about the long term.... In a real way, Dean might be better off if the Party he heads doesn't win in November. Then the Democrats might be desperate enough to listen to him." -- Matt Bai, author of the article.

Brief Excerpt:

“Bull,” Dean snapped, using a slightly more elongated version of the term.

“Huh?” Chris Canning, Dean’s personal aide, suddenly looked up from a loose-leaf binder. He seemed to think he had misheard.

“I’m not going to do that,” Dean replied firmly, craning his neck to address Canning in the back seat. “I didn’t come all the way up here just to talk to people who already agree with us. I want to talk to everyone else. I’m fine with doing Air America, but we have to do something else too. Isn’t there some conservative show we can do?” Teeters warned that the few right-wing shows in town could get nasty for the chairman. “If you can set something else up too, great,” Dean said with finality. “Otherwise, I won’t do Air America.”

Then Dean wanted to know how many organizers the state party now had on the ground, and Teeters told him there was just one: Teeters himself. The D.N.C. created his job — along with a position for a communications director — last year as part of Dean’s signature program, known as the 50-state strategy. Under this program, the national party is paying for hundreds of new organizers and press aides for the state parties, many of which have been operating on the edge of insolvency. The idea is to hire mostly young, ambitious activists who will go out and build county and precinct organizations to rival Republican machines in every state in the country. “We’re going to be in places where the Democratic Party hasn’t been in 25 years,” Dean likes to say. “If you don’t show up in 60 percent of the country, you don’t win, and that’s not going to happen anymore.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/magazine/01dean.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

This article explains plainly why he is getting a fight every inch of the way from the very Party he is trying to lead.

P.S. I like the Print title much better. It fits the article and the the tone of the piece perfectly. Go, Howard!

TC

[Totally Committed]

1. I know he's not a pedophile, but this is a good story!

LOL!

:kick:

TC

[NoPasaran]

2. K & R!

[NashVegas]

3. "Creative Destruction"

Oh lordie - a Discordian is writing on Dean.

Good. Have an apple.

Edited to add:

Oh god, this is why I heart Howard Dean -

"On the morning we left for Alaska, Dean went missing for a good half-hour. It turned out that he was in the business center of the MGM Grand, where he had been trying to figure out how to print his boarding pass but somehow ended up in an impromptu game of online backgammon with a guy who claimed to be in China."

[madfloridian]

4. Decent article, terrible picture...better one.

"The mere fact that Democrats would consider a “50-state strategy” to be novel — as if a national party might reasonably aspire to something less — says volumes about the rapid deterioration of the party that was, for most of the last century, America’s dominant political force."

That was a good part.

[Totally Committed]

5. That's a great pic of Dean. I love it.

The one in the OP was the one on the cover of the magazine this morning.

DeepModem Mom has a TIME article posted that dove-tails well with this article about how the Republicans are planning to win the November elections due to years of planning for it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2857446

If We can just get all Democrats as behind Howard, tactically at least, I really feel we'd be a far stronger Party and a threat to the Republicans' One-Party rule.

TC

[roguevalley]

11. he's smiling like a man who knows a secret. I love that man.

[janx]

6. It's very interesting.

Some fireworks are inevitable in a situation like this, but we can be cautiously optimistic about November.

[madfloridian]

7. Jerome gives his take on this at MyDD. TV ads versus GOTV other ways.

That is mentioned so much lately. Howard Dean's refusal to give Rahm as much money as he wants is based a lot on that issue. Good write by Jerome.
http://mydd.com/story/2006/10/1/131210/853

"Ultimately though, the article comes down to the polarization of the 50 state strategy vs the traditional battleground strategy, which I wrote about recently, Replacing the Battleground Mentality with the Mapchanger Attitude in the Democratic Party. If Emanuel and Schumer had designs that would be spending the additional funds on something other than broadcast network television, they might have a point for Dean to reach out further toward, but they don't (Rory O'Conner's recent, The Evolution of Political Campaign Advertising and NPI's Buy Cable fill out this picture)."

And though it is not talked about here very much...the DNC outraised both the other groups by Sept. 15 of this year. Nothing much about it anywhere, though. Maybe they took his plan more seriously then, or should I say began to attack more seriously.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/282

Democratic National Cmte $95,543,172

Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte $80,806,205

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte $77,193,131

The DNC needs more as they have to build party, get ready for 08, and elect state house folks.

[XemaSab]

8. This is an excellent article

k&r

[whirlygigspin]

10. Thank you for posting this article

I hope Dean pulls out his bat in the coming weeks and call on all his Deaniacs to give like there's no tomorrow so he can not only appease the candidates, but build positive momentum by 'stirring up the base'.

[unkachuck]

9. ....if there is hope....

....for the Democratic Party, it comes in the form of Howard Dean....IMO, he's best we've got....not perfect, but the best....