Rome was not built (or destroyed) in a day:
Love him or hate him, Howard Dean and his approach to campaigning laid the groundwork for Barack Obama to be nominated Thursday night.
And the party appears on the cusp of solidifying gains in the midterm election and perhaps winning the White House.
Dean has built his tenure as chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ‑ the ultimate insider’s job – on antipathy to Washington insiders. “This is a line that I probably shouldn’t use in Washington, but I will. When I came to the DNC we fired all the Washington consultants because we paid all of them a lot of money to tell us how to lose every four years,” Dean said earlier this month at a stop to rally party workers in Washington.
This was the direct result of the activists’ revolt after the loss of the 2004 election. Most of you have been with us and all our blogging allies for the duration of this journey. We followed up our victory over who would run the DNC with a victory in denying the nomination to the DLC-centered candidacy of Hillary Clinton. In retrospect, I don’t think there is much more we could have accomplished with our limited resources and with the powers that were arrayed against us. Yes, there are still problems within the party, but the next few days should be days to celebrate and concentrate on finishing the job. The job is to elect Barack Obama and Joe Biden to the White House, win significant gains in the congressional elections (particularly for candidates that are allied with our movement) and to prepare to move some of our most talented people into positions of power within Congress and the new administration.
For the rest of us, we must continue to work at the state and local level to take back the Democratic Party and make it a vehicle for progressive change. Anyone who is still moaning over Democratic weakness at this point just isn’t interested in a goal that requires being satisfied with incremental and imperfect change.
We must win this election. We have better people in place than we had any realistic reason to hope for. Now is not the time for hand-wringing and complaining. Moments like this do not come along often. We should take some time to celebrate what we’ve accomplished together and then it is time to work as hard as we’ve ever worked to get the immediate job done.
I feel really good about having joined the Dean campaign in 2003 and helping them get as far as they did. I was a small cog of course, but still, it was the efforts of a lot of people like me (and many of you who supported the campaign) who made this possible.
It goes to show that one person CAN make a difference, and that many people, working together, really can change this country.
None of this change would have been possible without the Internet. And that is why, along with our election work, we must always keep one ear to the ground to ensure the Internet stays open and doesn’t turn into an outgrowth of the major media. We must always listen to the small voices among us who may have a truth the big voices are missing.
Thank you ALL for your energy and hard work over the last eight years. It’s finally starting to pay off!!!
Btw – MSNBC has live coverage online all day. I’m listening in the background. Good stuff!
And let MSNBC know that you know the majority of polls show Obama ahead. Andrea Mitchell just said a ‘new’ poll showed Obama neck and neck with McCain, that Obama had lost ground. BS. Another poll shows Obama up by several points.
But we also need a list of action items
My #1 priority is ABSENTEE BALLOTS
The college vote is CRUCIAL. This cannot be overstated. The college vote will be 75-80 % pro-Obama, and it will take a huge effort to get absentee ballots to all those kids.
Does anyone know if this is in the works?
and I suspect the Obama ground game people are aware of the situation.
OTOH, it might not hurt to write the campaign and ask them what their plans for college campuses are.
I contacted them, and joined the group. I am always amazed at the lack of response from campaigns to emails. Yes, yes, yes, they get thousands, but some are more valuable than others.
You really can’t understand the volume. And I mean the volume of GOOD emails. You have to see it from the inside to appreciate it.
I get, myself, as a simple academic, between 300-400 emails a day. However, note that spam filters take care of 90 %.
Why can’t spam filters divert the emails to appropriate persons? That’s still not an answer, I know, but if a person had a small number (300-400/day) then mebbe some response could be made to some emails.
But I get your point, clearly.
I know that part of the cell phone number gathering was for GOTV. I heard a study on the way to work this morning that people who get a text message the day of the vote actually vote.
Booman I have said this many times….you have been one of the most important progressive voices on the sphere, when many of the so-called important bloggers were pooh-poohing Obama et al…you stood up to them and called them out for their nonsense. When Joe Trippi’s blog allies on the tubes were spreading his leaks to them around the sphere as gospel…we could all come here for the truth…I have so much respect for you and your writing…MANY MANY THANKS!
I adamantly second that!!!
Love him or hate him—
I happen to love and admire him. He took defeat and turned it into a powerful grassroots movement. Here’s a big cheer for Howard and his brother Jim.
You go to war with the party you have, not the party you wish you had four years from now.
But hell, look how far we have come in four years. Hell, look how far we’ve come in just two.
I’m one of those crybabies, the hand-wringers.
Universal heath care? Military industrial complex? Global warming? Inequality? All for shit in this election. But hey we’re winners!
I need bigger increments, and I need faster change. So does the planet.
All of this I could have taken excpet for Obama wimping out until last week. Had he kept that up, my God…
I’ll think about this. Right now not nearly enough change is offered, and I’m positive we could have got so much more if we’d just ask for it, or if the nominee wasn’t such a weenie.
Social Security a disaster? That’s cool.
[shakes head] We were a hair’s breadth away from a granite narrative that Obama could not fight. I really don’t think y’all know how close were to disaster until that awful image of a key ring showed up a Kos’s place.
I’m already sick of it. It mocks us, with everything that has gone wrong a key ring is our fighting symbol. Jesus Christ.
love Howard Dean. He knows how to organize.
I looking forward to his vindication.
Our county was one of eleven Obama-Biden headquarters openings in Indiana last Saturday. We’re going for it here!
Here, Elvis endorses some of our fine local candidates.