[
also posted on my site]: Lately we've been hearing about Democratic insiders who are terribly afraid that Howard Dean will sow the destruction of the Democratic Party in 2004. You hear it every day from Joe Lieberman. Nicholas Kristoff made the prediction in his column last Saturday that Dean is going to drive the Democrats off a cliff like George McGovern did. There are some Democrats who darkly warn that if Dean is the nominee, he'll have trouble getting Democratic Senators and representatives to appear on the hustings with him in some parts of the country, just as Dukakis did.
All those folks who are afraid that Dean will destroy the Democratic Party should take a look around: The party has already been driven off a cliff. If you look up, you'll see Karl Rove and Tom DeLay up there peering down at us and chuckling. The Republicans own the entire government right now.
J at Value Judgement points out a Sidney Blumenthal column in Salon today that puts Al Gore's endorsement in the context of what's happened to the Democratic Party:
Since the trauma of the 2000 election the Democrats have endured a history of loss and defeat, not only of office and program but identity, self-confidence and self-respect. As a congressional party that lost its majority in 2002, it has seemed to be in a nightmare from which it is incapable of escaping. Republican bullying has been met almost inevitably by Democratic cowering, the ruthless will to power by timid retreat. Before this spectacle, Democratic voters have felt themselves unrepresented and voiceless. But until the presidential candidacy of Howard Dean their burning sentiments lacked expression.
Blumenthal also says "In the face of constant provocation, Democrats see their own party as hesitant, compromised (if not complicit) and cowardly." I agree, and that's what's been burning me up ever since the 'gays in the military' thing blew up in the first few days of Bill Clinton's presidency. I'm tired of hearing the orders to retreat, and I don't feel things can change unless the Party changes. As J puts it:
Until the party starts to pay attention to voices like [Blumenthal's] and the voices of hundreds of thousands of Dean (and, to be fair, some of the Clark) supporters, they will continue to wander in the wilderness, flinching everytime some Republican says "boo" and consigning themselves to irrelevant ineffectiveness.
The Democrats who think Dean will take the party into the political wilderness need to take their blinders off and see we are already there. They also need to stop worrying about whether Dean is too liberal. (In any case, Dean is going to run to George Bush's right, politically.) Dean's position on the political spectrum is not what it exciting the Democratic base and its long-lost grass roots. It's that he stands up to the Republican assault. He's unafraid, and he invites the rest of us to shed our fears and come together to find our way out of the wilderness together.
The whiny naysayers who don't believe Dean's approach can win the general election are entitled to their opinion. But they're the same people whose failed strategies got us stuck here in the wilderness in the first place, and I don't know how they can honestly believe they deserve to be listened to. Meanwhile, Dean's people are reinventing and reinvigorating the Democratic Party right before their very eyes.