The Dems' New Dean

Democratic activists have a right to feel optimistic about Howard Dean's election as party boss (I know, he's not supposed to influence policy, but we can wish).

Typically, the Democratic National Committee's chair is supposed to be seen fund raising and not heard. Business-as-usual would demand that the head of the DNC be a technocrat in service to the conservative Democratic Leadership Council. At least half the pleasure of the governor's victory came from watching the corporatist Dems squirm.

With the out-of-power party being led by back-benchers like the inestimably wily Harry Reid and the stolid Nancy Pelosi, and with the Night of the Living Dead-visage of John Kerry lurking in the political shadows, it is left to Governor Dean to try to make elected Democrats live up to expectations.

Unlike his accommodationist partymates in D.C., Dean agrees with the rank and file that, to beat the Republicans, the Democratic Party must be both tough and right. The uncompromising Liberalism of Roosevelt and Truman won the Democrats four decades of dominance in Washington. Compare that with GOP-lite Clintonism which surrendered the keys to the kingdom in 24 months. Bill Clinton may have been the greatest Republican president since Lincoln, but his political charisma wasn't used to advance a liberal agenda and it never rubbed off on his nominal party.

As Dean put it during the campaign, we need to be proud again to be Democrats. That will happen only if we are prepared to fight for economic justice and to protect our basic political rights. It won't happen by meeting Bush halfway down the road to hell.

Here is Howard Dean's DNC Plan, as posted on the party's website:

1. Show up! Democrats should never concede a single state, a single district, or a single voter to the Republicans. We must be active and compete in all 50 states and work with the state parties to build a true national party.

This is a big change, of course, from the leadership's emphasis on winning a few closely contested seats and battleground states in the hopes of eking out a narrow majority. Electing a Southern moderate or two begs the question of why the Democrats should be given control of Congress. When the conservative radicals seized the federal government, first with Gingrich and then with Bush-Cheney, they already knew what they wanted to do to it.

2. The success of the national party depends directly on the success of the state parties — we must better integrate our operations by:

* Having the DNC pay the salary of each state party executive director to help ensure that the state parties have adequate funds.
* Collectively building and sharing supporter lists between the national and state parties.
* Recruiting, training, and encouraging candidates to run for office at every level — building tomorrow's farm team from the ground up.
* Actively grow local Democratic committees and communities by working with neighborhood activists who can reach out in their communities and enable the grassroots to support state and local candidates.
* Maintaining a permanent campaign in every state. We need to establish an ongoing, active presence, which does not have to be recreated every four years for four months.

You won't find anyone arguing against the idea of a people's democracy; it is an article of faith among Americans, often honored in the breach, it's true, but a core belief nonetheless, that the democratic process provides the best mechanism by which a society's members can decide how to conduct themselves. If Dean is sincere, this emphasis on the grass roots will shake the Democratic Party to its foundations and by its nature end the domination of the party by corporate interests. Already, grass roots organizing is happening in California, among other places. Again, the enemy must be the inspiration: conservatives have done a bang-up job of energizing their base at the school board/city council level. Now progressives need to get back in the game, and the Democratic Party, barring some serious and unlikely electoral reform, is the best potential vehicle for doing so.

3. Set core principles that define the Democratic Party and what we stand for and take a bottom-up approach to the development of the Party's message;

I remain convinced that the party's -- and the country's -- interests would be served best by making economic justice the heart of Democratic Party program. By concentrating on three issues -- national health insurance, social security and the minimum wage -- the Democrats could remake the political debate. Putting people first would remind the party's office holders that corporations are not people, but legal entities chartered to perform certain needed economic functions and serve the public good, and entitled only to those rights and privileges we-the-people give them. By adopting a bottom-up approach to development of its message, the party would serve notice on the corporations that they will no longer be able to tell us how to live our lives or run our communities.

A party committed to restoring democracy would be incapable of doing the bidding of big business or the moneyed elite. A party democratically reflecting the values of its members will be driven to fight to improve the lives of all citizens, to enhance the interests of the community, to resist not exalt unfettered exploitation and greed. Good for Senator Clinton for attempting to neutralize the thorny and divisive abortion issue. The same should be done to minimize other lifestyle concerns that distract from the core issue of economic justice.

4. Use cutting-edge Internet and other technologies to fundraise, organize, and communicate with our supporters;

Sure, why not, always remembering than an unending plebiscite may be great for raising money, but may not be the most elegant instrument for forging policy.

5. Strengthen our political institutions and leadership institutes to promote our leaders and our ideas — these organizations must work together in a coordinated and integrated fashion to elect Democrats at every level, so that we can take this country back.

The right wing success this week in all but destroying class actions as devices of redressal, punishment and reform can be traced directly back to work that went on in the netherworld of incestuous corporate-funded think-tanks, foundations and lobbying organizations fabricated to advance and rationalize the neo-conservative agenda. Our own institutes and foundations need to be expanded and deployed just as aggressively.

But we need to keep in mind that the Right did not merely organize to elect Republicans at every level; it is crucial to neocon dominance that they closely monitored whom they elected to office and whom they elevated to leadership. The arrival of Governor Dean, partisan by instinct, is a move the neocons would applaud if he was of their ilk. It is heartening evidence that the Democratic Party is beginning to think and act more idealogically.