In his book, “You Have the Power”, Dean talks about the Democrats’ loss of power in the 90s.  I think his words were vital and clear. They were not meant to attack or belittle; they were meant to point out that we could just could not do this any longer.  

I want him to keep that clear voice, not let it get muddled.  

He has many good things to say about Clinton, quite complimentary.  However, he goes on to blame the DLC for claiming credit for Clinton’s win for the wrong reason.  He says Clinton won because he was Bill Clinton, because he had a personal kind of magic.  He says the DLC claims he won because he moved to the right.  

“The Democrats, throughout the 1980s and early 1990s didn’t stick up for the people who were left behind by the Reagan revolution and the corporate restructuring that came at the end of the first Bush recession.   Eschewing ‘class warfare’, they didn’t stick their necks out for the millions of American whose wages and living standards were frozen or falling.”

The Democrats missed the growing resentment of the ‘angry white men’ who would later vote them out of congress because they just weren’t listening.  And when….tried to catch up with the Republicans by belatedly wooing angry white men, they failed to understand that we needed to woo them differently…not with the unsubtle appeals to racism and homophobia used by the Republican Right, but with economic arguments.  We began to soft pedal our opposition to racism….and downplayed our remarkable achievements on civil rights…”

SNIP…“We became afraid of the Right, afraid of the anger, and instead of being steadfast, we pandered….The Democratic Party has paid a big price for that. Worse, our people have paid a big price for the collapse of our will to lead.  We failed to articulate a vision for American that keyed into Americans’ hope of overcoming economic and social instability. …”

….“By remaining silent about the things that mattered so much to Americans, we allowed ourselves to be painted into a corner and to be defined by the Republican opposition.  ..”

Then he says this kind of behavior “laid the groundwork for the rise of the radical right”.

Further,he talks about trying to get help from congressional Democrats in 1991 for the states to pass health care bills on their own.   He and several governors went to talk to the House leadership.  They asked for changes in federal laws that were keeping states from working out their own plans for universal health care.   The leadership refused to help on the grounds, he says, that many had waited their whole careers to pass it, and they did not yet have the votes….and they did not want to states to do it.  (Page 62)

And a paragraph from page 63 that just makes me furious.  Again from 1991 and early 90s.

SNIP..”Many of the congressional Democrats wouldn’t take a risk on anything that might be unpopular, be subject to attack, or allow other people to outshine them in getting some actual work done.  So they wouldn’t give a green light to the governors in 1991; and a few years later, they wouldn’t hear the signals coming from Bob Dole that he was willing to compromise on Clinton’s health-care plan.  They were paralyzed between their fear of losing an election and their fear of change.  In the end they lost and became the victims, in 1994, of the most sweeping congressional changes in sixty-two years.  They set the table for Newt Gingrich.  It was an awful irony: After decades of domination by the so-called party of the people, the party of FDR and Harry Truman, America  continued, at the turn of the millennium, to be the only country in the industrialized world that didn’t have health insurance for all its people. “

“The Democrats, who by the early 1990s had been in power in Congress without interruption for forty years, became so obsessed with keeping their seats and staving off challenges that they forgot why they were there.”

I want Howard Dean to keep up the straight talking. He was not being anything but honest in these words.  We need them now as well.  I know he has to stand up for everyone in the party, but I do hope he keeps calling things as they are.   Someone has to do it, but no one else is or has.  

I can hear his anger coming out from things that happened in the early 90s, back when I was not even paying attention.  Because he spoke out, I am paying attention now.  

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