Matt,

Why are you not defending Dean's tenure? CW when Dean took the job was that he would be judged by Dem performance in 2006. Well, by that metric he totally kicked ass, right? Now they are rewriting the criteria? Total bullshit.

The Democratic nomenklaturawill never forgive Dean for one sentence: "I am Howard Dean, and I represent the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party."

In politics, being right, being right in public, and especially being right too soon, is at least as dangerous to your career as being wrong.

They will not stop until Dean is destroyed.

When are people going to learn that the Clintonistas (and by extension the Clintons) DON'T support the 50-state strategy, like they say they do.

Don't support the netroots, like they say they do.

And believe in a top-down approach to politics.

Guess who they think we should have on top?

Remember that we lost the Congress for the first time in 40 years under the Clinton Administration and they will throw each and every one of us under the bus if it served their purpose.

We are not on the same side.

They are the enemy.

Some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the 50-state strategy and his stinginess with funds for House races cost the Democrats several pickup opportunities.

I can't decide whether this is some sort of fucked up retribution for showing up how out of touch the Beltway crowd is, or someone's idea of a powerplay in anticipation of the 2008 fight.

If McAuliffe or Rendell were still running it, we'd be looking at a VERY different 110th Congress.

Besides Carville, who the hell are "big name Democrats"? Let's get this out in the open now, instead of 18 months from now.

-GFO

If James Carville put on a turtleneck, he would look like a busted condom.  I really have no interest in listening to him about anything.

Oh, unless I need advice on how to get 46% in an election.

another dollar of my Fucking hard earned money to the DNC ever again. The DC insiders rather lose power than share power with the people. Well the DC insiders can go to hell.

restore turnerbroadcasting's account and he can tell you what you need to know.

They're attacking Dean the same way you're attacking Rahm.

The fact is, Democrats won in 2006 and BOTH deserve credit for it.  Dean for his 50-state strategy and Emmanuel for recruiting strong candidates in the more conventional toss-up races.

Hopefully, the large amounts of money Dean put into places like Utah and Mississippi will pay off in the long run, but I can see their idea that he was burning through the money and didn't work well with Schumer and Emmanuel.

Howard Dean promised not to run for President. If they throw him out (and I do not see how they could) Dean would no longer be bound by that promise.

I think Carville is speaking for TimeWarner as much as the Clintons. I think his thinking has been shaped by his experience there.

There is a big non-blog world out there and many of them don't like blogs one little bit. I have spent ours and sent out zillions of emails to otherwise intelligent Democrats trying to convince them that blogs are a good thing. Carville in many ways speaks for those people. It is annoying, but they still have to be won over.

I'd like to see which races these "big name democrats" think we had a chance if Dean had not be committed to making our party a national party, like it should be.

If anything at all, 2006 was a vindication of Dean's 50 state strategy.

My guess, these "big name dems" are Dick Morris (more of a joke than a democrat) Marshall Whittman, Joe Liberman, and Hillary Clinton (who herself can be blamed for several lost opportunites to help pick up seats).

I'm was worried about Dean suffering from Foot in mouth syndrome, but no more. His leadership has been great.  

I don't think he can be ousted, frankly.  In the last election the Washington power elite learned to their horror that they don't control the way the DNC delegates vote -- and they still haven't gotten over that fact.  By and large the DNC state parties are very very happy with Dean (except for my own state party here in Illinois, sigh: too much machine, too much status quo as a way of maintaining power, not enough passion for voters)and I just don't see that "they" are going to be able to scrape together enough votes to oust him.  And if they try -- I think they'll be in for a big shock.  They're annoyed because he doesn't spend enough time in Washington hobnobbing with them . . . instead he goes out and hobnobs with people on the ground in each state . . . i.e., the people who voted him into office.  So -- I'd like to see them try .  . .

I have been hearing for a long time from all my DC friends (lobbyists, dem congressional staffers, etc) that Dean was doing a terrible job, didn't have any money, and in short, was a failure as a chairman.  Those descriptions never really went away.  There was a lot of discontent and I never really got the full story, but I know a lot fo DC people felt that if the demcrats lost Dean was going to be to blame.

No way! This election is a validation of Dean and a repudiation of party control by political consultants. Those people are just worried about the gravy train drying up. This is a good time for all of us to slap down Carville and send him home to Mary Matalin.

I don't know if he can be pushed aside, but this is yet another heads-up to the Clinton Mafia that Bill and Hillary would like to get this done.

http://thepremise.com/archives/11/10/200 6/644

The last Clinton to-do item was re-electing Joe Lieberman, and they accomplished that by having Bill Clinton throw Ned Lamont under the bus on Larry King.  If you want Dean to stay, you better be prepared to fight like hell.

After the mid-terms the presidential candidates become the important constituency for the DNC. DNC delegates will line up behind candidates, and if a number of candidates are not happy with Dean their delegates will pressure him to move on. The candidates will be looking hard for evidence that Dean can raise enough money and build a ground campaign that can support them in the general.

Dean's high run-rate (over $4 million/month) and lack of cash on-hand will be a concern, he will have to make a compelling case that his spending on the 50 state project is efficient and will make a big difference in the 2008 presidential. Even candidates inclined to support Dean's long term party building will need a lot of money for TV from the DNC.

Carville just lost a lot of my respect.  On the other hand, some folks in the blogosphere whose first response to this victory was to bash Rahm haven't impressed me either.  As Paul Hackett would say, quit being typical Democrats.

Sounds to me like Carville's (1) eyeing the RNC's potential replacement for Ethel Mehlman, Michael Steele, and thinking the Dems need to counter with a minority; and (2) wanting back in, now that Dean has shown that the Dems are still a viable party separate and apart from the Republicans.

Simple me.  GOP gets their ass kicked, and they throw Rummy and Ken-doll under the bus.  But certain of the ass-kickers want to throw their own chairman - who got them there, by ANY objective standard - under the bus?  Wha?

If anyone should be "purged" from the Democratic party, it's these dickheads.  They're making Joe look good.

Carville helped get Clinton elected, but since then he's gone D.C. party circuit, and I now believe he is actively working for the GOP.  He's nothing more than a Repub infiltrator.  We may as well go straight to Mehlman or Charlie Black for advice as soon as listen to Carville.

speak for anybody else?  I agree that the silence of Pelosi and Reid and other prominent Dem's concerning DNC's contributions to victory are somewhat telling, but has anybody other than Mr. Matalin recently suggested that Dean be replaced publicly?

I know that Mehlman at the RNC has a 2-year term that expires in January.

Let's see. On election night 2004, Carville called his wife Mary Matalin, Cheney's hired gun, to tell them that Kerry was considering challenging voting conditions and results in Ohio. No sign he was particularly helpful in 06.

James, you're done.

At this point, if Dean goes, I go, and so does my money.

"IF we can win this one, we can't win shit."

I wonder if Carville just feels bad that Dean knows more about winning than Carville does.  Or perhaps Carville failed to understand that when the establishment put the hit job on Dean in 2004 primaries that the "we" in "we can't win shit" meant him and pricks like him.

Just a thought.

We just won a great national victory. We took both houses of Congress. We won a majority of governorships. The fifty state strategy built democratic ogranizations in states that had long been virtually abandoned by the national party, and that paid big dividends in wresting control of state houses or increasing Dem representation in state houses all across the country.  Plus providing the infrastruction on the ground that could be ramped up fast as more and more House races suddenly became "in play" in the last weeks of the campaign. [Absent the 50 state party infrastructure building Dean did, those states would not have had the party organization in place capable of ramping up quickly as formerly "safe" Republican seats became "in play" late in the game.]

And now Carville wants to start an intra-party war to remove the head of the DNC who presided during the successful campaign?

Jesus H. Crist.  We don't deserve to govern.

By Joe Conason

"The DNC chairman's "crazy" strategy of rebuilding the Democratic Party across all states helped it ride the national wave against the GOP...

Despite all the complaints and demands directed at him over the past 18 months, Dean stuck to his principles. He and his supporters in the netroots movement believed that their party needed to rebuild from the ground up in every state, including many where the party existed in name only. These Democrats prefer to think of their party as one of inclusion and unity. They openly disdain the divisive strategies of the Republicans who have so often used racial, regional and cultural differences to polarize voters..."

"Much of that money was spent in ways that obviously paid off on Tuesday, including the 2005 election of Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine in Virginia -- where Jim Webb's upset victory over incumbent Sen. George Allen overturned Republican control of the Senate. Several million dollars was spent on rebuilding the party's national voter files, yet another essential sector in which the Republicans have enormous technological superiority..."

"What Dean and his organizers created, however, was an environment that allowed insurgents and outliers as well as the party's chosen challengers to ride the national wave of revulsion against conservative rule. That enterprise, in turn, surprised and overwhelmed the Republican capacity to respond. Faced with many more viable challenges than anticipated, the Republicans made mistakes in allocating resources -- and were forced to defend candidates in districts that are usually safe..."

Now the DC Insiders Losers want to throw Dean out. Again I say fuck them.

Read the Whole Salon Article

And as was just pointed out over at Eschaton, Carville wants the DLC candidate Ford in so he can control him.

It's always about the power with these shitheads.

It's the DNC members who are the "deciders." We have a vote, he doesn't.

And I can tell you that this DNC member has Howard's back.

The majority of the DNC is made up of people from state parties: The people who run the organizations that Dean augmented or revitalized with his 50-state strategy. I am sure that none of them want to go back to the days when the DNC ignored the local parties. I cannot even imagine that the people who have the votes on the DNC would not back Gov. Dean.

Partly because of that support, our governor asked the Democratic Party of Oregon to run his field campaign, something that hasn't happened in recent memory. The DNC-paid organizers were the key players in that effort. They ran a great ground operation, built up a stable of excellent, intelligent volunteers, and brought in the votes. The 50-state strategy made a difference in Oregon.

Democratic campaigns thoughout the state cooperated in ways they never had before. We were united and all working from the same plan. That helped immensely in maximizing our resources, allowing people to do double-duty for the governor and local candidates. And guess what--we took back the Oregon House as well as electing the governor, returning all our Democrats to Congress, and retaining the Oregon Senate. It was a very proud day for Democrats in Oregon, and having the staff paid for by the DNC was key to our victory.

There have always been inside-the-beltway types who don't want Dean at the DNC. They don't get him, never have, probably never will. Dean raises plenty of money, but even more important, he's all about returning power to the people. All the TV ads in the world can't replace neighbor-to-neighbor organizing and having ordinary people involved in the process.

Dean's term runs for another two years, and there really isn't anything Carville can do but try to keep people from funding him. He's not the decider.

Want to help? Buy a Democracy Bond. It's YOUR Democratic Party, support it.

Cross-posted at Kos.

I've got Charles P. Pierce to back me up:

RAHMBO REDUX. OK, this whole business about who's allowed to spike the ball in the end zone gets to last until midnight tonight and then we all hold hands and sing together. ... As recently as the summer of 2005, when I was working on a piece for The Boston Globe Magazine about Howard Dean's chairmanship of the DNC, it was a ludicrously open secret that Rahm Emanuel and the DCCC believed that a nationwide strategy of the kind Dean was proposing likely would prove not only futile, but catastrophic, and a lot of them were already measuring the space on the wall where they'd hang the Doctor's head. They believed neither in the strategy nor, especially, in the guy pushing it, and any of them who says they did is simply dealing in a barefaced non-fact. There's no shame in admitting that other people saw an opportunity before you did. Nobody denies that the late money was valuable, but Emanuel can best be said to have produced a bumper crop out of ground that somebody else plowed.

It's impossible to quantify the impact the 50-state strategy had on Tuesday's victory but I am dead certain of one thing: it couldn't have happened without Howard Dean.

So let me see if I can break it down into essentials...

Dean doesn't kiss DC ass, and spends less time there than other leadership.
He doesn't want to win this year, he wants to win every year.
He was remarkably prescient (or lucky) in reading the mood of the nation's broad middle.
He thinks the party is about its members, not its leaders.
And for this, he may be a marked man.  Yep, sounds like the tall-poppy syndrome that keeps underachieving organizations perpetually that way.

I think this demonstrates, yet again,that Carville does not have the same vision of the Democratic party as most of its grassroots (or netroots, of course!). As far as I am concerned, one of the dire consequences of the Clinton years was the installation into the Democratic corridors of power of politicos like Carville, McAuliffe and Morris. Sleaze and corruption were winked at for the sake of money and power. The party and its connection to real people was severely damaged.

Yes, certainly we need to protect Dean. But, just as importantly, we need to work to marginalize the influence of DC politic-whores like James Carville. How can we do that?

At the same time, I would be cautious of painting everyone associated with the Clintons with the same brush! We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater! For instance, Wesley Clark is a great team-player, despite his association with the Clintons. We always have to remember that people should be judged on their own words/actions and not who they are linked with.

I am truly befuddled by the criticism of Dean, especially the stuff I'm seeing on the Plank at TNR. He's not a good fundraiser? Do people not know about the "internets?" Yeah, the RNC raised more money than the DNC, but they've done that in every cycle in recent memory. The difference being that Dean wasn't blown out by nearly as much as the past "moneymen" of the DNC.

We won 275 seats in state legislatures across the country. We picked up several state-houses across the nation. That means we have a fighting chance of changing the political landscape in 2010 when redistricting happens again, as it does every 10 years.

This advice to dump Dean is so insanely short-sighted that one has to doubt the party bona-fides of anyone who proposes it.

Looks to me like it takes a 2/3 vote to oust the Chair. Hmmm. Mr. Carville should hold his breath...

Poor James Carville, the Norma Desmond of the DC beltway crowd.

'He used to be somebody! He used to be big!'

The party is doing great with out Carville, we don't need his advice. I saw Harold Ford doing several interviews during the election season and he comes across as cold and unsmiling. You can't win an election if you have no personality.

I'm one of those "small" doners that the dems keep bragging about.  I send Chairman Dean $25 whenever I can.  I will heed whatever boycott is called in response to an overt power-play against Chairman Dean.  I love the guy.  

Count me down with that as not just a threat but a promise.

come on, you guys.  This is reverse psychology.  They're trying to make Dean stubborn because Carville doesn't want Dean to run for president.  Dean would soak up an insanely high percentage of grassroots/netroots contributions for the '08 race.  Carville knows his other presidential candidates of choice need access to that money, so he's trying to neuter Dean in '08.

It's completely clear to Carville that '06 is a vindication of Dean's '04 message.  He's trying to box him out.

Insane.

DEAN IN '08.

I gave hundreds of dollars to the DNC because I thought Dean was right, when I had never contributed to the Dems before. I signed up with MyDD just now specifically to add that I'm another voter who will never contribute to the Dems again if they maneuver Dean out... unless (under whatever circumstances) he runs for President as a Democrat.

No.

Just no.

I think Dr. Dean has done a great job. I make a monthly contribution to a Democracy Bond which I'll most certainly cancel if Dean is ousted. He was the reason I bought a Bond in the first place, so why bother if he's gone? And I'll send all groups a fax to let them know why I won't contribute to them anymore.

FWIW, there's a movement on DKos to get as many people as possible to send the DNC $20.08 (to signify success in 2008) on Dean's birthday, Nov. 17. That might be another nice poke in the eye to people like Carville.

Matt I presume you are asking for our thoughts and Ideas.

Dean stays - Period. It really is disgusting that Rahm's lack of maanagement skills and planning abilities to look ahead and forsee his financial needs are being dumped on Dean. Dean has vision and managment skills. Rham's lack of skills is his to own period.

How can we do it.

Carrots First. (Chris pointed out most of them).

1. We will continue to perfect GOTV and far exceed anything the RNC can do.

2. Those of us who buy Democracy bonds will do so only if Dean is allowed to continue to build his 50 state strategy and rebuild the party.

3. The netroots will continue to be the "rapid Reaction Force" in debunking rumors and doing oppo research.

4. Wes Clark has been saying something to the effect that battles are won by boots on the ground. The netroots will commit to keep volunteering, phone banking etc where required.

5. Point out that Chris' "Use or Lose it" paln saved the DNC and DCCC millions in debts by finding and extracting millions for the final push.

STICKS

1. Never again will netroots donate to DCCC or DSCC if the people in charge are not recognizing that its a "team" effort. Those that disparage us lose.

2. No longer will Net roots/Grass roots activists contribute to DNC. We will instead give to individual candidates through our own mechanisms.

3. Ford and his family are involved with dirty financial dealings. The Netroots will start LTE campaign to get this word to DNC delegates, Party Chairs, and citizenary at large.

Overall Campaign.

1.  You, Jerome, Markos, Jane Hamsher, Booman, John Avrosis, and all our other Blog leaders need to have a summit to find a way that we can coordinate and work more closely in tandum. Jane has a "netroots" page coming up and perhaps that should be the day by day ACTION page, with updates being provided to the Blog leaders for publication.

2. We need to take down Carville. He screwed Kerry and all of us, with his WH call to his wife Mary Matlin about Ohio late the night of 2004 elections. (Pages 344-347 of Bob Woodward's new book "State of Denial"). Carville's own website describes him as a "celebrity" as opposed to a political guru. His wife has a Republican Fund raiser for Liddy and others at his home-thus he was most likely there. Carville is a spy within our ranks we don't want nor need him. His movie that came out in September was a bust.

3. As far as I am concerned Carville can be a "celebrity" on his own time and his own dime. No need to pay him 15% with OUR money. Make it imminently clear to Reid Pelosi et al, that we will not work with Carville in anyway whatsoever.

If they protest about how nice he is - the answer is fine-they can have him over to dinner every night if they like. What they cannot do is mix business with firendship. We expect a more professional leadership than that.

4. We have week or two declared as "Carville" time and have blogs publish all negative news we can find for the duration of that time. Make him completely irrelevant.

After the Republicans have admitted to a thumping, why is it that the only one complaining on the Democratic side is James Carville, who today in addition to trashing Howard Dean, praised the RNC, the outfit that brought us the racist ad that defeated Harold Ford, James' supposed candidate for Chair?
Perhaps he's not aware that under Dean in this midterm election the DNC has raised record cash --- all hard dollars -- including three times as much from major donors, eight times as much online and made a $30 million investment in the '06 cycle, three times as much as the DNC put into the last midterm. Not to mention we made an $8m overhaul of our voter file which was successfully used in 47 states and through the 50 state strategy invested in states like Pennsylvania, Kansas, Indiana and Montana where we had critical victories on Tuesday.

I agree. If the DSCC and DCCC want to continue to push bullshit they will find themselves on the outside of the progressive movement.

Many, many people in this country feel there is no difference between the parties and if DSCC and DCCC are intent on proving that very publicly over the next two years so be it.

Dean stays and more than that he stays big.

Carville is done.

Here's what the tally looks like to me:

- House pickups in 17 states

- Senate pickups in another 3 states, not counting those states with House wins (MT, RI, VA)

- governor pickups in 2 more states (AR & MA)

- state legislature pickups in yet another 3 states (MI, MN, OR)

That's 25 states right there... How this proves that a 50-state strategy was a "catastrophic success," so to speak, and that it's time to dump Howard Dean, is beyond me.