Burnt Orange Report

My Howard Dean Evolution and Devolution

By Byron LaMasters

I promised to respond this post by Karl-Thomas a few days ago. I finally have a chance to write it now.

I first met Howard Dean in May of 2001. I was a senior in high school at the time and a lesbian couple in Dallas (who had gone to Vermont to get a Civil Union), who I had met through my activism during the 2000 election cycle invited me to be their guest to a Howard Dean reception hosted by the HRC Dallas Federal Club (a group of wealthy gay donors who give $100+ per month to the Human Rights Campaign). I had no idea at that time that Howard Dean would be running for president, but it was an honor to meet the man who had the courage to sign a law granting gay and lesbian couples the same equal benefits and rights that are granted to heterosexual married couples. It almost cost Dean his re-election. While he won 50-38% over Ruth Dwyer in 2000, Vermont's quirky election laws send the election to the State House when no candidate wins a majority. With Republicans taking over the state house in a backlash over the Civil Unions (in the "Take Back Vermont" campaign which I saw on barns and yards across the state when I visited in the summer of 2000 for a rowing camp), Dean barely won re-election. Dean was within 2645 votes of the election being sent to the state house, where he surely would have lost, and likely not had the opportunity to run for president. On a side not, my lesbian friends were a big part of Dean's re-election in 2000. When the race was close in September, they decided to send out a fundraising mailer to the several hundred gay and lesbian couples who had gotten Civil Unions in Vermont since it became law earlier that year. Within weeks they raised over $10,000, and that last minute cash helped put Dean over the top.

When I first looked for who to support in 2004, I looked to Al Gore. When I met Al Gore in May of 2001 (yeah, that was a busy month for me), I encouraged him to run again, and I pledged to support him. Al Gore inspired me. I may have been the only person in America to be inspired into politics by Al Gore, but I turned 18 in July of 2000, and while I initially liked Bill Bradley, I quickly rallied to Gore. While there was little I could do to help in Texas for the Gore campaign (and I got involved in a congressional race where I could make a difference instead), I did what I could. I co-wrote an article for my high school newspaper, Al Gore: The Best Choice For Our Generation. And after the election, I was angry and helped organize protests in Dallas of the Florida recount. So I was with Gore, then Gore decided not to run in December 2002, so I had to find a candidate.

Well, January 2003 rolled around and I was angry, depressed and sad for America. Democrats had just gotten trounced in November. We lost our Senate majority, we lost seats in the House, we lost the Texas House, lost seats in the Texas Senate, Republicans swept the statewide ticket and we were about to go to war without allies, without clear evidence and without exhausting all of our other options. There were several candidates running for president and none of them really stood out. That was - until I heard Howard Dean speak. I remember hearing Dean speak at several forums in January and February 2003, most notably the NARAL event and the DNC Winter meeting where Dean inspired me. Finally, a candidate willing to stand up to George W. Bush. Finally, a candidate not ashamed to be a Democrat. We had lost the 2002 election, in my opinion, because Democrats failed to offer a clear and coherent message for America. So many Democrats ran campaigns on messages such as: "I support the President on this and that, but....". Howard Dean was the answer to this problem. He gave Democrats a reason to be proud of their party. He stood up against the right-wing in Vermont, and he beat them. Last Spring, he was the only one standing up to the right-wing in America, and I thought that he was our best - our only shot at beating George W. Bush.

By March, I was a Deaniac. I went to my first meetup in March, and brought half of the University Democrats with me. I hosted a Students for Dean party and raised some money for the organization. I went to meetup in April and then to more meetups throughout the summer. I went to three fundraisers between March and July, donating a total of $40. I wrote letters to Iowans. Why? Because I didn't want 2002 to happen again. I saw most of the other candidates as Bush-lite. I believed that Howard Dean was the only Democrat that could beat George Bush, because he was the only one that had the courage to fight him and speak out. Howard Dean was the only candidate that drew hundreds and thousands of supporters to his events and rallies. He was the real deal.

This fall, I began to have my doubts. There was no defining event last fall that caused me to go from a hardcore Dean supporter to soft supporter - it was more of a gut feeling. My anger over the war had subsided, so that was no long a defining issue. I still supported Dean, but I stopped going to meetups, donating money and volunteering. I stayed in Austin while many of my friends boarded a plane for Iowa in September to blockwalk for Dean as "Texas Rangers". Here's what I wrote about that at the time:

I'm not able to make it for the weekend, because I'll be working tonight, and to be perfectly honest, I'm a little less enthusiastic about the Dean campaign than I was several months ago. I think that Dean had the right message for the Spring of 2003, but I'm not quite sure if it's the right message to win next November. Unfortunately, there's no candidate out there that just grabs me, though, and I'm not longing for Al Gore or Hillary Clinton to jump in the race either. Of the other candidates, the only other candidate that I'm really drawn to is Wesley Clark, but things like this and this obviously concern me. So, basically you can put me on the record as currently leaning Dean, but my support is much softer than before. I've officially resigned from various volunteer roles (Students for Dean, Longhorns for Dean, etc.) that I've held with the campaign.

A few days later, I wrote this:

I do think that there are serious issues about Dean's ego, about his abrasiveness, about his issue positions, about his ideas for Iraq that his hardcore supporters would like to ignore (or just pretend that it's DLC propaganda). Can Dean win the nomination? Yes. Can he be elected President? Yes. But he still has a lot of maturing as a candidate to do (although you could say the same about any of the other candidates, especially Wesley Clark). Back to Bush. I don't just want to beat him, I want to beat him bad. I don't want it to be close enough for their to be any doubt. And I want to bring a Democratic Congress in with our Democratic president. I'll support the candidate in which I think could best do that. If after a few months, it becomes clear that Wesley Clark is in the best position to bring us that victory, then I'll endorse him. If Howard Dean remains that candidate, then I'll stick with him. We'll see.

I guess the main concern was electability. I worried that Dean couldn't beat Bush. Not that I had any specific evidence at the time, but it was a gut feeling that he was less electable than another candidate - and electability was the main reason that drew me to Dean.

Moving forward, some people might think that the "I have a Scream" speech is the main reason that I'm turned off to Howard Dean. Actually, that's not the case. The main reason is that I think that his campaign organization is vastly unprepared to take on George W. Bush. Take a look at the results of Iowa. Howard Dean probably spent about $7 Million in Iowa. He had thousands of volunteers, and finished a distant third. Geez! That's what I call a miserable failure. Pundits have pointed to a bunch of things as turning points in the campaign. The two that I've seen most often are the capture of Saddam Hussein and Al Gore's endorsement. Both are good things. It's good that Saddam is in custody and it was good, for the Dean campaign, that Al Gore lent his support. But where Dean failed, was translating Gore's support and his campaign from one of an insurgent to one as a frontrunner. He never did it. He pulled in endorsements, but continued his message attacking Washington Democrats. And while he attacked "Washington Democrats who supported the war" (Edwards, Gephardt, Kerry), Dean hit the campaign trail in Iowa with his new best friend, Tom Harkin.... a Washington Democrat who supported the war. Hypocrisy anyone? Maybe, maybe not, but regardless, a terrible campaign tactic. And those ads... I hope that Dean has a new campaign ad team. Some of his ads are decent like his response to the first Club for Growth ad, but others where he's speaking into the camera against a blank backdrop are just god-awful.

So why? Why have I gone from "lean-Dean" to uncommitted at this point? Two reasons. The first is that my main reason for supporting Dean in the first place was because I thought that he was the only candidate that could beat George W. Bush. Dean was the only candidate that was energizing Democrats and bringing new people into the party. That theory was disproved on Monday night in Iowa. While more young people attended the Iowa Caucuses than ever, the majority of 18-29 year olds voted for John Kerry and John Edwards. And furthermore, while the vast majority of Iowa caucusgoers opposed the war in Iraq, the majority of anti-war caucusgoers voted for John Kerry and John Edwards. Why is this? Why did anti-war Democrats and young Democrats vote for Kerry and Edwards who supported the war resolution? They obviously saw something in Dean that made them look elsewhere. The main reason that I supported Howard Dean was because he could bring new people into the party and energize the base. The results of Iowa suggest that Howard Dean didn't do that - and if Howard Dean can't win over White pacifist Democrats in Iowa, then how can he win anywhere else, and more importantly, how can he beat George W. Bush?

The second reason for my conversion from lean-Dean to uncommitted is the "I have a Scream Speech". Was I personally offended by it? Not really. Did the media completely blow it out of context? Yeah, of course. But, the fact of the matter is that Howard Dean has two major perceived weaknesses. First, that he is weak on national security, and second that he is angry and doesn't have the temperament to be president. I don't agree with either, but that's not the point. American electoral politics is much more determined by perception than reality. Yes, politics is unfair, but it's true. Is George W. Bush a "compassionate conservative"? Hell, no! But Bush and Rove convinced enough people that he was one, and he became president. Perceptions... Many people heard Howard Dean for the first time on Monday night. And what was their perception? That he is loud and angry and most importantly... unpresidential. Dean and his people like to blame the media. That's the easy way out. He was the frontrunner and the frontrunner gets media scrutiny. That's life. And that's a good thing. If Howard Dean can't handle the fire he gets from the media and other Democrats, how the heck could he handle a barrage of attacks from Bush and Rove? Dean went to the DNC chair to whine about people attacking him when he should have just had a little more thick skin and taken an "Aww, shucks" attitude about it. Instead, he lashed back, and while he knocked off Dick Gephardt, he seriously wounded himself.

So what now? I'm uncommitted. If Dean proves that he can get back on message, that he can laugh at himself a little bit more, that he can spend his money a little bit better, that he can produce better ads, that he can deflect attacks, that he can stop blaming the media, that he can prove that he can go toe to toe with Bush on national security, that he can disprove attacks that he is angry and doesn't have the temperment to be president, that he can once again prove that he (and no one else) can bring new people into politics and the party - THEN I'll be back with him. But I have serious doubts. I want to see the Democrat best positioned to beat George W. Bush win the Democratic nomination, and I don't know who that is. It may be Dean. It may be Kerry. It may be Edwards. It may be Clark. Dean should get credit for being the first serious Democratic presidential candidate in this race to stand up to George W. Bush (which all of the other candidates are finally doing now), but I'd rather nominate someone who figured it out late and can bring a serious challenge to Bush, than nominate a candidate that had the right message from the begining, but who is perceived as unpresidential and would more likely lose to Bush. But for now, I figure that the best thing I can do is wait, work on local races for the next month or so, and let the good folks of New Hampshire, South Carolina, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Delaware, Missouri, North Dakota and the other states after February 3 help me with my choice on March 9th.

Update: One thing that I forgot to add, which came up in comments by Sherk:

It seems like electability is a fairly important criteria to you, for obvious reasons. I'm curious, though, what if you knew for certain (say, through divine revelation or something equally guaranteed to be true) that no Democrat could beat Bush come November? Would it change who you support?

Well I disagree with the premise, as WhoMe? points out in the comments that polls in the last day or two have shown John Kerry beating George W. Bush. We're a 50-50 nation and I believe that barring any huge changes by November, this election will result in a close victory for either side. However, I would not change who I would support even if I knew that the Democratic nominee would lose no matter what. I want Democrats to nominate the candidate that is not only best positioned to take on Bush, but who is best positioned to have coattails on our entire ticket all of the way down the ballot. In that respect, Dean has worried me for months. While I think that Howard Dean can beat Bush in November, he would probably win with a combination of the northeast, the midwest, the west coast and the southwest (and maybe Florida). The rest of the South would be pretty unattainable for Dean, in my opinion. Well the South (Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Oklahoma) is where the battle for control of the U.S. Senate will be primarily fought. While it's unlikely that any Democrat would win those states (except Florida, and maybe North Carolina for Edwards), Clark and Edwards are best positioned to cut Bush's coattails in those states. If Dean were the nominee, we would probably see the Democratic candidates in those states running away from Dean on issues such as his position on war and rolling back all of the tax cuts. With the Texas redistricting, some of our Texas Democrats will be running away from Dean if he is the nominee. The best example is Martin Frost who in his announcement speach last week boasted his support of education and supporting the "No Child Left Behind Act" (which his opponent Pete Sessions voted against), which Howard Dean has attacked other Democrats for supporting. And Martin Frost is only the tip of the iceberg of Dean's potential problems for Texas Democrats this fall. Frost is probably the most liberal of the five Democratic incumbents (Frost, Stenholm, Sandlin, Lampson, Edwards) running in new Republican-dominated districts. I want all of them to win, and to have a presidential nominee with a platform that they can run with.

Posted by Byron LaMasters at January 24, 2004 10:17 PM | TrackBack