Dean's Band of Outsiders

[realFedUp]

(Harold gets it)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51811-2003Dec10.html

Dean's Band of Outsiders

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A31

There are two kinds of Democrats in George W. Bush's America: those who are on the outside and know it, and those who are on the outside and don't. And the peculiar fascination of the Democratic presidential campaign is to watch the interplay between these two groups.

It is the Bush White House and the Republican Congress that set up this dynamic. By winning office with a negative 540,000-vote margin and then proceeding to govern in the most relentlessly partisan fashion from the right, the president has made unmistakably clear that the concerns of Democrats are of no interest to him. On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, the Republican leadership relies solely on Republican votes to get its measures passed, going so far as to exclude mainstream Democrats from conference committees. When America's new laws are to be negotiated, Republicans talk only to themselves.

Disastrously, it's been the Democrats in Congress who've been the slowest to pick up on their new marginality. Some of the Democrats who voted to authorize the Iraq war in October 2002 did so -- or say they did so -- in hopes of prodding Bush to embrace a more multilateral approach toward Iraq.

snip

Today the Democrats finally have a legislative leader -- San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi, who heads the party in the House -- who understands that dealmaking with the likes of Tom DeLay is a chimera, and that the business of the Democrats is to oppose. The overwhelming vote of House Democrats against the Medicare bill is testimony to her success. Her tenure casts a cold light on that of her predecessor, Dick Gephardt, who, in his eight years as minority leader, never assembled a united opposition to the malignant follies of Gingrich and DeLay.

[realFedUp]

1. another little snip

:-)

The secret of Dean's success has been twofold. Alone among the serious Democratic candidates he understood that the party was shirking its obligation to oppose -- indeed, that the grass roots was furious at the failure of its leaders to realize this. Second, his campaign became the real Meetup for millions of Americans who'd had no place to go to affect politics in the age of Bush. Dean's edge is that his campaign has provided thousands of young Deaniacs with a dimension of meaning that their hitherto disaggregated lives may have lacked. No other candidate is within light-years of offering that.

In a sense, Al Gore's decision to endorse Dean is emblematic of the growing realization of the party's establishmentarians that they're outsiders after all. But Gore's been on this path for some time now. He was, we should remember, the first major Democrat to oppose Bush's war, speaking out against it in August 2002. Since losing the presidential race at the Supreme Court, he's also called for single-payer health care and recently come out against renewing our new-age version of star chamber justice, the USA Patriot Act.

[whirlygigspin]

3. One for the history books

There are two kinds of Democrats in George W. Bush's America: those who are on the outside and know it, and those who are on the outside and don't...

[Cassandra]

2. I was reading the part about Pelosi...

while watching the debate replay with Gephardt talking about his leadership abilities. Dick may be good on many issues but he's a poor leader.

[realFedUp]

4. If he can't rally the Dems in the House

how does he think he can rally a divided country.

[Cassandra]

6. Which is why...

I'm for Dean.

[Cha]

5. Great Article and Meyerson does "Get it"...

How refreshing!

[Demeter]

7. Irony is 98% of US is on the Outside

And half of them are too bedazzled by the spin to realize it.