The Hope of the Web....a review and critique.

[madfloridian]

This is an interesting write-up by Bill McKibben at The New York Review of Books. It reviews Crashing the Gate by Kos and Jerome, but it also puts into words a lot about what some of us have tried to explain about why Dean's campaign resonated. It is about what Dean was and about what he wasn't. The reviewer does a good job of presenting the flavor of the book.

Pretty well done overall.

The Hope of the Web

The birth of the new movement led by Daily Kos came in 2003 with the unexpected emergence of Howard Dean as a presidential candidate. Since that campaign provided both the technological and spiritual inspiration of much that came later, it's important to reconsider what Dean's venture was (and was not) about. It rose in the shadows of the Bush ascendancy in the years following September 11, when very few people—certainly not presidential candidates with an eye to getting elected—were willing to challenge the White House directly. In that situation, Howard Dean's forthrightness, especially his willingness to strongly oppose the war in Iraq, united many people worried that Bush had succeeded in stifling dissent.

And I was glad to see McKibben mention this. Most of us who supported Dean knew well he was not very liberal. That was not what it was about. It was about not being afraid, and it was about being a leader when one was needed. People just did not get that. It is why so many of us are still on board with DFA and DNC.

But it's also important to realize that Dean wasn't particularly liberal. In his years as governor of Vermont he'd earned a reputation as a moderate in social and fiscal policy, addressing health care for children, for instance, but frustrating local activists by refusing to take up a more comprehensive medical plan. Bernie Sanders, the former mayor of Burlington who is now the only independent member of the House of Representatives, is a Vermont liberal. Dean is not. What mattered in Dean's case was his open manner and his willingness to risk making clear statements about Iraq. In their book, Armstrong and Moulitsas—who are widely known on the Internet by their shorthand names Jerome and Kos—retell the story of the campaign's early days, especially Dean's speech to the California Democratic Party in March 2003. He followed the well-known candidates, who trimmed and tacked:

The crowd, a few thousand of the party diehards, was getting a close look at the men seeking the Democratic nod, and not liking what it saw.
And then Howard Dean walked on stage.

"What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the President's unilateral intervention in Iraq?"
That brought loud cheers from the delegates. What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting tax cuts which have bankrupted this country and given us the largest deficit in the history of the United States?"

The crowd, they write, "was on its feet, the convention hall shaking from audience pandemonium, the speech serving as a liberation of sorts." Party activists "weren't alone in the fight. Not anymore. They had a champion and his name was Howard Dean. The call to arms by Dean was ideologically agnostic, purely partisan." And in that partisanship, it launched a movement that outlasted his ill-fated campaign and is still gathering strength.

[madfloridian]

1. "This party's strength does not come from consultants down."

"When Dean eventually won, he said, "This party's strength does not come from consultants down. It comes from the grassroots up." In essence, this new force had lost the primary, but made it clear that it could continue to fight."

Good luck on that, Governor.