Here's the thing: you are the hands across the water guy, and rightfully so. It's true that we are moving towards 'there's no red America or blue America, there's just the United States of America'.
We're moving towards it. But sir, we are not consistently there now. Your election is just as real as the election of this teabagger in Uncle Teddy's place. I know you know that.
We can't be complacent, in any way, at any time. I wish we could, because lord knows I'm tired. But I won't leave anything on the road, and I acknowledge that the road does not begin a few days before an election.
There is no such thing as 'we can't lose'. There's no such thing, in no such election, in no such town or city or state.
As DNC Chair, Gov. Dean let to our winning elections, organizing in an honest, profoundly effective way. When he ran for Chair, besides the old guard being against him, the state party chairs weren't all for him when he came in, and they became his biggest fans. He is beloved and trusted by many in your base because he is a pragmatic progressive populist patriot, he fights to win, he learns when he loses and he has already put 5 terms of governing behind him, with solid progressive results in his state.
Your election was one amazing triumph, but, as you yourself said, just a beginning. We are all in the fight of our lives now, for truth, justice and the American way the way Dr. King envisioned it, the way Uncle Teddy envisioned it, from the slaves to the suffragettes and on to the unions and beyond: all these American voices and hopes and dreams lay in all of our hands.
There are so many ways in which I am so proud of much of what you have done, and I am not one of those rude people who think that cursing and writhing gains anything except their personal catharsis. I will speak with you, therefore, in the way I would like to be spoken to, were our positions reversed. With deep respect, and real affection, with honest observations, fear. And hope.
Please call Gov. Dean, even if the rest of your advisors don't like him, or don't respect him, your base does, and we should count for more, if only because of the fact that we have more votes than they do;-)
He's figured out how to deal with the media both in front and behind the scenes: which I, as a diehard supporter, was afraid would never happen.
And he calls the lies and obfuscations, the corporatism and cronyism, exactly what they are, in public and in private. He knows how to organize, and how to get people to fight and keep on fighting (this from someone who, as a result of the Dean campaign, has kept up a level of conscious activism for these past 8, after having cast my first vote ever for Sen. Kerry). That's what's needed here to turn this big American ship.
I won't pretend that I should tell you who you 'must' have in your cabinet: that would just be stupid, since I have no power to make you do it, and I don't want to waste my time, or yours either. It's nice that Mr. Emanuel knows the Congress and knows how to curse and stuff. And I would bet that there are victories that have come from his tenure, maybe many that I don't see.
So I won't do that. But I will ask you, as someone who worked very hard to get you where you are today, to pick up the phone and ask for Gov. Dean's advice, and when you hear it, please take it.
I guarantee that it will be presidential quality advice. And, even more, it will be the advice of a progressive patriot.
Which I believe, is exactly what America needs.
photo credit: Alex Brandon