Dean = Growing A Spine, At Long Last

I can't tell you how tired I am already of the protestations of Republicans and Democrats alike that the nomination of Dean for DNC chair signals a leap to the left. Puh-leeze.

Dean was the definition of moderate when he was Vermont’s governor. He balanced budgets while investing in education and health care. As a candidate, the issue with Dean wasn’t so much that he was a lefty, it was that a wide swath of his supporters were (guilty as charged, incidentally). He had the most moderate of all possible positions on gun control (that it should be a locally decided issue), and advocated a policy for paying for health insurance for more people -- spreading the costs of risk inherent in health insurance policies across a larger pool – that not too long ago would have been considered conservative. On Iraq, Dean was just among the first to profess what has now become common wisdom.

No, the real trouble with Dean has been that he’s unDemocratic in his willingness stand up strongly, consistently, and without apology for his principles. For what used to be and what ought to be again Democratic principles. He goes one further and argues that if we’re going to bother to have principles, we should organize so that we can win elections on them. Moreover, he’s been ballsy enough to tell the truth: it will take a long time because we’ve got to start form the ground up. 2006 won’t be the year we realize the fruits of a year-and-a-half of labor and retake the Senate.

Thirty years ago Republicans looked around and saw that America was to the left of them. They decided to move America. Now, Democrats are looking around and noticing that America is to the right of us. But rather than develop a strategy for moving America, we’re trying to figure out how to run over to meet it. If we learned anything from John Kerry it should be that pandering, or fence sitting, to try to meet everyone where they are is not a winning strategy. (Well, we should have learned two things: pandering is ineffective, and so is running a campaign based entirely on distant biographical history). If we want to win again, and move the governance of this country back in the direction of our nation’s best ideals, we must move America.

At the national level, we are a rudderless, principle-free party without a coherent or consistent message or state-by-state organizational capacity to deliver a message even if we could settle on one. Which is not to say we’re doomed. We’re only doomed if we decide that we don’t need to organize around a solid set of principles, learn to talk about them, and organize from the very lowest levels on up to communicate with, persuade, and ultimately convince Americans to support us. This is the process by which we will move America. Lucky for us, it’s not a novel process – we’ve got thirty years of Republican history to guide us.

Dean has clearly articulated a very moderate set of principles. They only seem liberal because the Republicans have been so successful at moving the country rightward. He has also not only articulated but put into motion a strategy for rebuilding the party from the lowest levels on up.

Will Dean’s leadership result in retaking the House or Senate in 2006? Probably not. Will it send us to victory in 2008? Maybe – we’ll have to see whether we develop the spine along with him to nominate someone we believe in, rather than someone we hope our neighbors will believe in. Ultimately, only Dean’s style of strong, principled, unapologetic leadership coupled with genuine commitment to building the party will take us back to a position of political power. It will happen faster if we support him.

I can’t sum it up better than Paul Krugman did:

For a while, Mr. Dean will be the public face of the Democrats, and the Republicans will try to portray him as the leftist he isn't. But Deanism isn't about turning to the left: it's about making a stand.