The reason why I am split is mainly the following question: would Roemer being chairman ultimately help Evan Bayh in 2008?

With Rosenberg as chair, we might be able to gain back the Jewish voters that voted with the GOP this year.  Schumer is the new DSCC chair.  Is Rahm Emanuel (sp?) the new DCCC Chair?  I don't see anything on their website.

This is a scenario I see: Dean and Rosenberg split the progressive DNC members and Roemer might sneak through the door.

Media perception is another thing to look at.  I know Dean has a AAA rating from the NRA and is a fiscal conservative, but the way he ran his campaign, he will place that far-left image on the party.  From people in the south that I have spoken with, they do not want Dean as chair because we are already looked at as being liberal in the south and a Dean chairmanship would make us look green (again, i did not say this, others have).

But now I say F--- that.
We need someone with BALLS, like Landreiu from Louisiana or that kickass lady from Michigan (forgot her name).

We need someone like Dean, if not him, who is aggressive and charismatic.  If Dean gets it, I think we have some promise because he looked a lot better on MTP this month than he did the whole primary where he kept putting his foot in his mouth.  As long as he shows he is ready for prime time, it's cool.

Man, I'm just so TIRED of losing and letting losers direct my party. And it is my party too.

Ron Reagan was on Hardball MSNBC tonight and he spoketh the truth.  Our representatives don't stand for anything anymore.  In the great movie SEVEN, John Doe says "You can't just expect people to pay attention nowadays, you have to hit them over the head..."  

We must hit our leaders in the head and make them listen.  How can i do that this evening?  Is there an email or an address # I can contact to let my reps know I'm coming to hit them on the head?

I need some direction from my small island of blue in Orange County Florida.

I nominate Sir Kos of DailyKos.com fame as the DNC chair. The reason:

• He is young and upcoming.
  
• He is a minority (Latino/Hispanic American).
  
• He served in military.
  
• He is a blogger - new media - with access to the pulse of the nation.

AKB

Personally, I never supported Dean, per the CW I thought him unelectable.  That hasn't changed.  I also thought that the movement he led in the primarys would fade.  About that I was wrong.  Jerome is right.  By harnessing the power of the Dean movement throughout the campaign, the institutional leadership sold their souls to it, gave it legitimacy, gave it power.  Now they want that power back, but it ain't that easy.

Their are seriously afraid of the kind of power Dean will wield if he is named to the chair.  With his credibility and popularity among the party faithful, he would be the most powerful Democrat in the country and that, plain and simple, grates on their egos.

What didn't work in a short political season, is solid gold for the time remaining before the next election cycle.  All those newcomers are just waiting for direction from Dean.  Waiting for something to believe in again.  And if Dean is shut out of the DNC Chairmanship, the Democratic Party can kiss those political babies with their mousepads, shoeleather, and btw, their wallets, good-bye.

However, Dr. Dean has too high of a profile.  The Republicans would make him an issue.  His fate is to be an outsider pushing the party to come to its senses.

What the DNC needs is a business person, not a place for a Democratic politican that has lost his or her office.  The DNC needs to be run like a business.  It must develop a national organization in every state; this is by far the most effective way to get out the vote.  As importantly, it must help form the message by correctly expressing the values of the Democratic Party, vary the message by region, perform market and demographic research, and derive the best ways to advertise on a cost effective basis.  

The RNC leaders, Gillespie and now Mellman, are relatively low profile, but the RNC does its research and organization.  Simon Rosenberg seems to be in their mold.  His blogs are right on the mark in a practical way.  He has one thing that the RNC chairmen haven't, that is a profoundly deep devotion for the party causes (I sense the RNC ones are in it partly for personal advancement).

So my vote is for Rosenberg

Bush barely won.  Remember that.  One of, if not the closet re-election of an incumbent in history.

but all the blood and failed policy is on the GOP hands.  

Give me Dean, or they won't get my money.  Don't listen to any talking heads from the RNC or the media.  They don't know crap about anything in OUR party.  

If you don't give me Dean, I won't give the DNC a dime.  I gave them and Kerry and other Dems $500 in 2004.  I'm sure the Greens would like that money.

The December 23 Los Angeles Times reports -- under the headline "Democratic Leadership Rethinking Abortion" -- that the national Democrats are seriously debating a shift in their all-out commitment to a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. Both of the Democrats' Congressional leaders -- Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate--are backing a candidate for Democratic National Committee chair, Tim Roemer, "an abortion foe who argues that the party cannot rebound from its losses in the November election unless it shows more tolerance on one of society's most emotional conflicts." And Roemer "said he would encourage the party to eliminate its 'moral blind spot' when it comes to late-term abortions."

"Tolerance"? For returning to the era of coat-hanger abortions? For recreating a new criminal class of unlicensed abortionists? That ain't tolerance, bro', that's a cave-in to the theocrats. Moreover, since people with money can always go abroad to get perfectly legal abortions performed in safe medical conditions, a retreat on abortion by the Dems would be aimed solely at the economically disadvantaged: the poor, as usual, would be hardest hit. Yeah, that's a great Democratic program, alright -- let's torture poor women!

Oh, and guess who's also encouraging the watering-down of the Democrats' full-throated defense of a woman's right to control her own body? Why, that noble Democrat of principle John Kerry -- the L.A. Times tells us that, "after his election loss, the Massachusetts senator concluded that the party needed to rethink its stance. Addressing supporters at a meeting held by the AFL-CIO, Kerry said he discovered during trips through Pennsylvania that many union members were also abortion opponents and that the party needed to rethink how it could appeal to those voters, Kerry spokesman David Wade said." (Another flip-flop--a sure sign that he's thinking of running again.)

Having blamed their election loss on uppity gays and planned to shun the movement for their rights, now the Democratic elite is scurrying toward positions that will reaffirm the right of religion to legislate morality and throw women overboard in the process. Some, like Nancy Pelosi, have already suggested that the privatization of Social Security is a negotiable issue--there go the seniors...At this rate, if the Democrats keep mowing down their base constituent groups in this cross-fire of post-defeat recriminations, you'll have to have a paid-up membership in the Southern Baptists to be a Democrat (indeed, right-wing Dems like Chris Matthews have already suggested that the party's next nominee for president must be a Southern Baptist).

One of the "softenings" of the party's abortion position its cretinous honchos are suggesting is requiring parental consent to have one. That means subjecting, BY LAW, teenage girls of 17, 18, 19, and 20 (depending on where they live) to the dictatorship of parents who are religious primitives -- just like, say, those beacons of liberty Pakistan and Morocco.

Is there no limit to the poll-driven cowardice of the Democratic Party's elite? The Chinese have a saying: "Half the sky is women." If the Democrats forget that, their continuing lurch to the center-right will be a suicidal one.

Doug Ireland, a longtime radical journalist and media critic, runs the blog DIRELAND, where this article first appeared.  

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec2004/Ireland1224-2.htm

Thanks in advance.

If it aint Dean, I am going Green.

That when you give the grassroots a meaningful seat at the table, there is no limit to the creativity and energy that they can inject into a campaign...

But even in the much-lauded Dean for America structure, the two-way communication model was largely more an ideal than the reality.

Sure, the naive and idealistic Dean staff believed they were creating a new political paradigm in which the people became stakeholders, but there was never an effective mechanism in place to harness the creativity and energy of those supporters...

Just the money...

And though some strong ideas came from the net/grassroots, many potentially stronger, race-defining ideas went unused and unnoticed...

So, what can Howard Dean really do to nurture two-way communication if it remains simply pleasing rhetoric?

The challenge of combining a professionally run, sophisicated, well-managed organization with an inspired group of stakeholders, seems tremendously difficult to pull off...

"So, this isn't a problem of the DNC as an organization not wanting Dean, it's the Democratic Party's current leadership that doesn't want change."

Who do you mean by the party's "current leadership"?  

As for Joe Lieberman -- I just plain don't want to be in the same party with him.  If he stays down and invisible, maybe.  

Vermonter, you're right.  I am and was a Dean supporter from the start but I found the Deaniacs increasingly conformist in their views -- groupie-thinkies.

"The challenge of combining a professionally run, sophisticated, well-managed organization with an inspired group of stakeholders, seems tremendously difficult to pull off... " is true.  The problem is the stakeholders have to be considerably more pragmatic and experienced... and sophisticated.  I think it can be done -- it has to be done.

I think he COULD do some good as DNC head, but I FEEL that he would mostly go on TV and put foot in mouth like he eventually does because he has an admirable lack of a brain2mouth filter, which is a great personal quality in my mind, but will scare Joe Voter.