Dean's plan to build state parties and to bypass the beltway bandits in the process is the only way to build a viable national party apparatus capable of challenging in every Congressional district each and every cycle. Dean's DLC, DCCC and DSCC critics have compiled a record that would have gotten any coach in professional or collegiate sports fired some time ago.  Like one particularly successful Democrat once said, "All politics is local".  The Beltway Democrats have produced NOTHING but pablum for years, or maybe it's pumpkin soup.

Let's just say for the purpose of argument that it is ALL true. Let's just say that Dean knows how to cater to the net/grassroots of the Democratic Party. Let's say he wasn't real clear on how to raise money from the corporate crocodiles and the rich folks.

Then I'd have to say: 'GOOD ON YA, HOWARD!"

Just like I say, "Screw You Lard-Ass Losers in DC!"

Lefty!

As was said in the comments thread over at Eschaton:

"Good lord! You'd think Dean wanted a party that didn't suck up to rich bastards and Republicans! That's not what America's all about, bucko!"

Dean, and his brother Jim over at DFA, are also working with http://www.PublicCampaign.org to help reduce the role of money in politics.  But the TNR folk have been sold out for so long that they simply can't imagine going back to a time when corporate interests didn't own both parties.  They start going into jitters at the mere thought of it.

"WTF?" is probably the most charitable thing I can say about this story.

I'm amazed there are people who still don't have a clue about Howard Dean.  It's their loss.

Reid, Pelosi, Rahm, and Schumer are responsible for 2006.  That is what the DSCC and DCCC are for.  Dean has a wider mandate than taking back one or both houses of congress in 2006 -- important as that is.  His mandate is to build the Democratic Party into a permanent majority and that will not happen from inside the Beltway over the next seven months.  

Keep it up, Howard.  

Here's yet another example of the "afraid to lose" mentality which grips the DC establishment.

Muddled Outcome for Both Parties in California Primary

"WASHINGTON, April 12 -- The race to succeed former Representative Randy Cunningham, a California Republican who pleaded guilty to corruption charges, took a complicated turn for both parties on Tuesday after a crowded primary in which a Democrat came in first, but did not win enough votes to escape a runoff... President Bush drew 55 percent of the vote there in 2004 -- and Ms. Busby, in winning 44 percent of the vote, benefited from a splintered field that included 14 Republicans.

'Democratic officials said they remained wary of expending political capital or funds in a race that, on paper at least, appeared daunting. They have taken pains to keep some distance from it in an attempt to make it harder for Republicans to portray a Democratic loss there as a repudiation of corruption as a campaign issue."

DC Dems are afraid to get involved in a district where Bush only got 55% because it "appered daunting" ? It's like how they're afraid to support  Arizona Dems even though Clinton carried the state in '96 and a whole slate of Democrats were elected in 2002 (thanks to a state campaign finance law).

When will DCDem get it into their ossified brains that they party  will never win by conceding?

Not only was Dean elected, he was elected with a mandate to change the culture at the DNC.  That mandate came not from the netroots, though it was supported there, it came from state party people who wanted a less Beltway-centric, less presidentially-focused national party.    

Dean is going about the business of changing the DNC culture in a measured way, with the support of the state party people and with the continued support of a large portion of the netroots.  He has that support because he is earning it.  

Can anyone recall a more closely watched DNC chair?  Other than the occasional tired and tiresome kvetching from the Loser Dems, we read and hear nothing but positives about Dean's work.

I don't expect that Dean can single-handedly revolutionize the DNC.  Dean spoke of the difficulties in effecting change from within before he announced he was going for the DNC chair job.  Those difficulties are real and institutional.  So long as we continue to do what we have been doing, all of us are part of the problem, whether it is Beltway Insiders hanging on to the old ways or 'grassroots' people refusing to join and energize our local and state parties.

I don't think Dean is perfect or always right, but he has been right or close to right on nearly every question of importance in the last four years.  The Beltway Insiders have been wrong and they have lost elections.  What are the chances that any of these Loser Dems will acknowledge that?

Gee, I'm really alarmed here... Dean's folks apparently don't realize that they're inadequately sucking up to the big donors!  They think that they need better grassroots fundraising!  

Gee, don't they understand the benefits of a party wholly owned by special interests?

Wait... we've already got one party like that. A second would be superfluous. In fact, that would seem to be indicative of the Democratic party's problem.

Scheiber doesn't realize that parties don't have to work like a game of Stratego where the only difference between the players is whether the pieces are red or blue.  Maybe a party that claims to best represent the working people, as opposed to corporate interests... might be better served by being financed by the working people... rather than the corporate interests.

Dean's on absolutely the right track.

Maybe that's why Al Gore just called Howard Dean "the ideal Democratic party chair".

The difference between Dean and all the other Dem leaders (political equivalent of bullpen by committee): with the others, no one has any idea whether they're heading on the right track or not.

With Dean, even though he might not be getting very far - I don't think there's been any comprehensive report-back on his efforts - at least we know he's definitely on the right track.

We know the party apparatus at state level and below is - of variable quality, shall we say? And we know that, without that apparatus in full working order, any success the Dems might have (eg, in winning a house of Congress in November) will be unsustainable.

Candidate Dean, I wasn't so keen on. Chairman Dean - Yeeeaaaarrrrgh!

Last year at this time, the new Montana Demo party leader, Dennis McDonald, initally refused to meet with Chairman Dean, because "he was too insulting to republicans". After being told the error of his ways, he did meet with Dean at the summer state party convention, after the Good Doctor got a fifteen minute standing ovation for just walking into the room to give his dinner speech. And that was before the state party got a couple of new organizers paid for by Dean's Democracy Bond program.

Last week, I walked into the state demo's headquarters, and there was a picture of our state chair shaking hands and grinning with Chairman Dean. Dean's doing what he promised to do and converting all but the must jaded skeptics.

What the opinion of The New Republic(ans) is?

A magazine by and for elitist trust fund kiddies, with a declining reader base that financially survives based on subsidies from it's publishers.

Really, who gives a damn? Society ignores people on welfare...why care about trust fund kiddies on welfare?