“Buck up, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. You’re on the right track. Noisy is good. Mean is even better,” writes Marianne Means today in her column:
The Republicans can ridicule you all they want. It only means you have their attention and they are worried. The lame duck blues are upon them. And they need a taste of their own medicine.
The Democratic congressional leadership, as usual nervous about Dean’s outspoken habit, cravenly criticized Dean for recent incendiary anti-GOP comments and urged him to tone it down.
But there’s a reason the Democrats are in the minority everywhere in the federal government — too much timidity in the face of controversy. Grow a spine, fellows. When the Republicans push, promptly push back.
Good manners never won an election.
Dean knows this and understands that it is his role as party chairman to energize the troops. This is not a game for wimps. We can’t be Bush Lite, he warns. … More excerpts below:
{D]espite Republican claims to the contrary, most Democratic activists think Dean is an effective chairman. Among liberals, who are the party’s base, his favorable rating stands at 60 percent.
He works at it. He’s been to 22 states since becoming chair in February. His speeches are, by all accounts, barn-burners. He’s raised $14 million, about one-half of that raised by the powerful incumbent Republicans.
But that’s much better than the last off-year cycle, in 2001, when the Democrats were out-raised by 3 to 1.
Dean’s problem reflects Democratic confusion over whether to mollify the red states by cloaking themselves in religious themes or solidify their secular base. Does the party concentrate on moving to the center or building a case for progressive policies that compete head-on with President Bush’s conservative concepts?
Dean favors the latter course, but his is not the only voice weighing in here.
Republicans are keen to say the Democrats have no ideas and that’s why Dean gets so worked up.
In truth, the Democrats do have alternative policies on health care, education, jobs and other substantive issues. Dean is talking about them but he drowns himself out when he veers into personal attacks.
Yet Dean is merely doing what comes naturally.
“The Republican attack machine goes after anybody, and they’ve said far worse things about many of our people,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., observed. Words to which Dean can subscribe.
No exaggeration there.
Full column in the Charlotte Observer. Via Howie in Seattle’s blog.
