the clear point is that Donnie HAS been working with the grassroots of the party for almost two decades and believes he has a demonstrable record of success from that work. i agree with him.
howard dean has a demonstrable record of success in vermont and getting people very excited everywhere else. his grassroots bona fides on the national stage are 2 years in the making. Donnie's are almost 20.
in the world of on the ground, in the trenches, with the organizers, AS an organizer, i give the edge to Donnie. a point on which reasonable people may disagree, but not an irrational conclusion.
Except that he hasn't. He went to law school, worked at the FCC, did lobbying for three years, and he's what, late thirties or something? Kos pointed this out a week ago or something.
What did he do well? If Michigan was so great, why aren't MI people endorsing him?
The guy's a fucking liar. I don't get why you don't see this.
Not only did I grow up in the Democratic Party ... and proudly so ... I have committed a significant portion of my life to it. And most of the time has been working in politics -- whether that's on a campaign, in Clinton's White House, at the FCC, or as an activist. Let me give you a list of states where I have spent at least three months on the ground working on a campaign or in service to the Democratic Party ... New Hampshire, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wyoming, California, Michigan, Mississippi, Connecticut. I have spent at least a month in many other states in addition to earning a law degree and having the chance to experience many other things.
Because of my diversity of background, I have been able to avoid being a paid political consultant and have instead worked as a staffer or a volunteer. Keeping one foot in telecom/technology and one foot in campaigns is a lucky streak that I am glad to have.
At the risk of sounding like blogswarm, I will repeat what I have said before. MI this year was no grassroots miracle. It was poorly managed, not very interested in listening to anyone not being paid to say something, and certainly not very amenable to letting localities do what they thought best given their local conditions. The GOTV plan seems not to have been planned until 3 weeks before the election, making it very difficult for those of us volunteers trying to implement the plan. Further, there seems to have been some very serious fiscal mismanamgement.
This is the closest thing Fowler has done to the DNC chair--and it doesn't resemble his platform in the least.
Now I suspect part of the reasons might be the way the Kerry campaign was run. But if that's true, some sort of explanation really ought to be part of your campaign. MI doesn't resemble your platform at all. Why should we believe your stint as DNC chair should be any different?
Barring an answer to that question, I've got to believe the (very nice sounding) platform is just hot air.
But Donnie, because he understands how to create, manage, and use the grassroots in over a dozen States, I think understands more clearly what the State Party Chairs, County Party Chairs and Executive Committees, and homegrown activists NEED from a national party to get good people elected to office.
The Dean Dozens refute that argument. DFA endorsed over 100 candidates at all levels of government and contributed to nearly 750 candidates around the country. One-third of those endorsed by DFA won their respective races, including a Democratic governor in Montana, a Democratic mayor in Salt Lake County, Utah, and an African American woman to the bench in Alabama.
Another DFA endorsement was Richard Morrison's race against Tom DeLay, which helped force DeLay to actually spend money and time campaigning in his district.
Dean was not the campaign manager, political direcor, field director, communications director, GOTV manager, or any other position in any of those campaigns. Don't pretend that because you feel strongly he should be the Chair, for very valid and compelling reasons, that his resume automatically includes all of the experiences you feel a Chair needs.
Donnie has been in the field, with the party activists and voters screaming with them that if the DNC understood what was needed to win a race they would provide x, and y, and three times as much z as we got. That experience is priceless.
