[Hat tip to Dee Wernette - who pointed this article out to me - I actually think I may have come to it on my own before seeing his email - but just in case I want to give credit where credit may be due.]
Today’s New York Times Magazine article on Howard Dean by Matt Bai is worth a read. The last page is particularly interesting, posing the question about whether the national Democratic Party should devolve and increase the power of the state parties - making state parties “not the intermediaries,¯ but “the principals” - which Bai presents as Howard Dean’s goal - or whether that is a mistake. The other point of note, more short term, is
“If Democrats fall short of retaking the House of Representatives in November, the party™s elected leaders will almost certainly blame Dean for the near miss. They will say that he squandered their best chance in more than a decade to control the country. They will say it proves that Dean™s risky strategy has badly hurt the party.
And yet, you could make a compelling argument that anything short of total victory in November would prove precisely the opposite. With polls consistently showing voters to be deeply nervous about a protracted war, high gas prices and stunted wages, this is that rare election that should turn less on tactics than on fundamental choices about the direction of the country; in other words, this election season is about the fear and fury of the electorate, not the addition of a few more door-knockers in New Haven or some negative 30-second spot broadcast in Columbus. As the Democratic strategist James Carville told Al Hunt, the Bloomberg News columnist, in August, ‘If we can™t win in this environment, we have to question the whole premise of the party.’”
Like I said, it’s an article worth considering - it’s a discussion about the future of the Democratic Party. I am certainly on board with a 50 state strategy, and I agree that there will always be compelling reasons not to spend money on each and every state (political campaign needs for money being what they are), so if you’re serious you have to commit to all 50 states even in the face of a potentially historic election. That said, I’m less clear on the implications of dramatically increasing the power of state level political organizations and dramatically decreasing that of the national party - and I suspect I am less on board. Thus far this strategy, as a GOP strategy, has not made it any easier for progressive groups to battle state Republican legislation in the face of much better financed conservative and reactionary forces. Progressive Democrats would do well to consider what currently exists in interparty state interactions with the Republicans before signing on to a situation th
DATE: 05/increase the power of conservative forces in intraparty Democratic policy conflicts.
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