Ari Berman has a great piece in The Nation about Howard Dean's legacy inside the Democratic Party. He argues, among other things, that we can understand Barack Obama's success in part as due to the fact that he looked at the promise of Deanism and decided to try to build and improve upon it whereas Hillary Clinton looked at its failures and decided to try to turn her back on the whole enterprise. Noam Scheiber did a piece on some similar themes back in late January.
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The Dean Legacy
01 Mar 2008 11:28 am
Comments (22)
Didn't Elaine Kamarck serve in the Clinton WH? I know she is a big Clinton supporter. So why would it suprise anyone at the glaring lack of quality in the study Anon mentions.
Obama did learn from Dean - but also from other great leaders in the world. Very similar to my favourite - Nelson Mandela. Is Obama the American Mandela? Obama brings a message of hope and change to a country at the crossroads. It is choice between the past and the future. But is Obama the American Mandela who could inspire Americans to a better future at home? And a future where America takes it rightful place at the global table? Is he the one? The question of whether Obama is the American Mandela is discussed in my blog Angry African on the Loose at http://angryafrican.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/is-obama-the-american-mandela/
Can we start the Dean for VP movement yet?
I'd rather have Dean doing what he's doing.
And I read that Nation bit. What it doesn't mention is how much of a Dean-like campaign Obama ran in 2004.
Obama like Nelson Mandela?
That's an incredibly insulting comparison for a leader who struggled against Apartheid and was jailed for years.
Obama supporters need to get a grip.
Incredibly insulting:
Just a few days ago, in Sergeant Bluff, Iowa, the former president said, "I have been blessed in my life to know some of the greatest figures of the last hundred years. Because of what you did. You, you gave me the chance to be president. You voted for me twice here, and I'm very grateful.
"I go to Nelson Mandela's birthday party every year and we're still very close. I believe if Yitzhak Rabin had not been murdered in 1995 we would have peace in the Middle East. I loved him as much as anyone I've ever known.
"But if you said to me today, 'I'm gonna give you one last job for your country -- go and do this -- but it's hazardous and you may not get out with life and limb intact and you have to do it alone except I'll let you take one other person,' and I had to pick one person whom I knew who would never blink, who would never turn back, who would make great decisions under pressure and would never forget what the purpose of being there was, I would pick Hillary of the people I've known and I would never even think about it. It would be an easy choice."
-Bill Clinton
Tougher than Mandela? Hillary supporters should get a grip.
I'm with DBT - Dean's doing a great job where he is. My mother couldn't stand Dean when he ran as President. She's come to admire him, though, since he took over the DNC. Living in TX, she's seen the results of his 50-state strategy. Two years ago, she started to actually see signs of a Democratic party working in San Antonio. It heartened her as, pre-Dean, it didn't seem to exist.
What Obama's done is meld his own social organization skills, well-honed on the rough South Side of Chicago, with Dean's success on the Internet. Whether or not he gains the nomination, Obama's campaign is historic, sheerly on the power of its management and organization.
Arnold Evans, you're my hero.
C'mon, if Bill Clinton wants to say that his wife would be the one person he'd take along on the toughest mission he ever faced, it's sweet. I mean, what, if you were talking about your partner you would not say such things?
Obama is the great innovation in presidential politics. The people desperately want a progressive Democrat but the Democratic party is controlled by the Washington establishment and won't nominate one.
When progressive insurgents organize a possible presidential candidacy the insiders can undermine it because only high-information high-education demographics support it. It is all too easy for established insiders to organize low-education whites and all the minority votes to do in a Howard Dean.
But with Barack Obama we have a progressive who has a lock on the African-American vote as well as educated Democrats. Even with the best organized, best funded, best established insider candidate in the past half-century the insiders can't force a victory against a coalition that adds up to a majority.
Finally the progressives have a leader who has proved with community organizing and solidarity that he will never abandon minorities for the preoccupations of the white-wine and cheese set.
It's a formula for the future. If we want truly progressive presidents, a new Howard Dean is not the way forward. The way is to promote and cultivate progressive minorities in leadership positions statewide. We should be looking to Linda Sanchez, Cory Booker, Raul Grijalva, Deval Patrick, and the like for statewide office and future presidencies.
The only flaw in Brian's wonderful comment is that Obama is not a progressive. One look at Goolsbee and the rest of the Social Security privatizers that make up the Obama economics team can tell you that...
I don't really have a stake in the "liberal" vs. "progressive" nomenclature dispute. One thing highly annoys me about the self-described "progressives": their eagerness to use that sneering tone and "not a progressive" as a bludgeon against anyone who doesn't pass their ever-tightening litmus tests.
I first heard of Obama when DFA told me to give him money. DFA used to be Dean for America, then when Dean dropped out it turned into Democracy for America - why let the mailing list go to waste? And so I gave Obama money that he totally did not need, in 2004. They still do that - endorse people and help them win. Howard's brother Jim runs it.
The analogy I used when Obama announced his white house run was that Obama was going to be the Jesus Christ to Dean's John the Baptist.
I didn't realize at the time I said that his campaign was going to take on the messianic tone that it did. I just thought that Dean was the fiery radical that got people activated and prepared for a new kind of politics and that Obama was going to be the one that actually brought it into being.
I buy it as useful analogy.
What's strange about it is that it has Hillary starting out by turning her back somewhat on the DLC model, which I saw Dean building upon (and I felt many of the most avid Deaniacs were in denial about that, thinking he was a liberal because he was anti-war) Some may laugh, but this may have been Hillary wanting to be more true to some of her more liberal beliefs as opposed to those of Bill Clinton's? Certainly she had the liberal label applied enough by the right, why not accept some of it?
----
john @ 4:23 PM:
...his campaign was going to take on the messianic tone that it did. I just thought that Dean was the fiery radical that got people activated and prepared for a new kind of politics and that Obama was going to be the one that actually brought it into being.
John the Baptist? :-)
P.S. I should probably add that I liked Dean as a candidate very much, but was really really turned off by much of the Deaniac netroots blog commentary and felt they might eventually hurt him, much of the attitude was very negative, not the optimism needed to win a presidency. Obama is Mr. Optimism, but strangely and worryingly, many Obamabots on the internet (not so much in brick-and-mortar ops) are giving off some pretty negative vibes which, if continued and expanded, may hurt in a general race.
Also, does it even need to be noted that many of the faithful of both camps are similar in that there's a cult of personal celebrity or whatever you want to call it, they support the man himself as someone special. Reagan also had this.
p.p.s. on the cult of personality thing
Peggy Noonan in Dec. 2006 on Obama and projecting one's own vision onto a candidate is an interesting re-read:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110009388
I can't abide the woman, but you've got to give it to her that this topic is her expertise.
re: cult of personality
I'm a big Obama supporter, but am I the only one to find the latest will.i.am video really creepily reaching into Our Supreme Leader territory?
Until you start trying to rename every airport, federal building, and outhouse, I think you can rest easy from worries about a Reaganesque cult of personality forming around Sen. Obama
Hahaha! Dean created a market for himself (and other forward-looking ppl), rather than relying on the old useless market. And the old useless ppl are wondering why they can't get rid of him.
Kvenlander: "am I the only one to find the latest will.i.am video really creepily reaching into Our Supreme Leader territory?"
No, I was turned off by the name chanting too. In stark contrast to the previous video where Obama's name was neither heard nor seen. And it comes out as this cult meme is propagating.
But for a bit of balance:
Just a few days ago I stopped by a Clinton campaign rally at the UT-Austin campus, featuring Bill Clinton. Last week I was at an Obama rally at the state capitol. There is a remarkable difference in chanting at these rallies, but maybe not what you expect.
At the Clinton rally, the chants I heard were: "Hi-lah-ree, Hi-lah-ree"
"Maa-dum Pre.si.dent, Maa-dum Pre.si.dent"
One of the opening speakers even was yelling into the mic:
"HILLARY SPEAKS FOR ME! HILLARY SPEAKS FOR ME! HILLARY SPEAKS FOR ME! HILLARY SPEAKS FOR ME! "
and then said, "I want to hear everyone here say, HILLARY SPEAKS FOR ME! HILLARY SPEAKS FOR ME! HILLARY SPEAKS FOR ME!"
If you were there, you'd agree with my caps lock.
That was asking from the crowd more than they were comfortable with. In contrast, at the Obama rally if memory serves right, the only chant a speaker tried to initiate was: "Fired up! Ready to go!"
Comments closed March 15, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Have you read that "subsequent study?" It is HILARIOUSLY bad. I love Dean, but that study looked like something the coal industry or the tobacco institute or something would fund, and if I were Harvard I would want to distance myself from Kamarck because of it.
It would also probably be worth mentioning that she is also a DNC member, and as such not exactly objective.
Posted by Anonymous | March 1, 2008 11:41 AM