From PoliticalWire….
Ryan Lizza says some “big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the 50-state strategy and his stinginess with funds for House races cost the Democrats several pickup opportunities.”
One of the names being floated to replace Dean is Harold Ford.
Love to see it. Him and Rahn Emanuel.
Why not just officially change the name of the party to “Republicans 2.0”?
This is the dumbest idea yet from the worthless hacks who’ve repeatedly let the American people down.
Hmmm…Rahm Emmanuel wasted 3 million on his ego candidate, Tmmy Duckworth, which is more likely to have cost pick-up opportunities (PA-06 comes to mind) than Howard’s 50-state strategy, which helped give us the big gains we got.
Big name Democrats just want to keep all their power to themselves…look at Hillary and her outrageous $29 million campaign for re-election against a nobody. She could have given 10% of that to other candiates to help them win without hurting her chances one iota.
Democrats need to start feeding their young if they want to stay in the majority.
I’m not going to take that too terribly seriously. My reading is that this is more or less an expression of frustration at having been deemed largely irrelevant during this election cycle. I seriously doubt Dean’s going anywhere.
There’s a couple of diaries over on Big Orange about this. Basically what I take away from them is that in order to oust Dean some other candidate (let’s say Ford) would have to get half of the DNC membership in a mood to oust Dean and replace him. Whether they’d just vote to kick him out and then find a replacement, or whether they’d call an election and Ford would have to get support from half of the committee, is not clear.
Personally I also doubt anything will come of this. Dean may be one of Those To Whom We Have Not Given Our Stamp Of Approval to the DC insiders, but let’s face it, without Dean this election cycle would have been yet another exercise in frustration for the Democrats instead of the rout it turned into.
If anything they need to expand the 50 State Strategy, consolidate the gains where they’ve made substantial investments, and start more investment in states where they haven’t been able to do much yet. Rebuild the party everywhere so that by 2008 the Republicans will think of this week’s election as the Good Old Days.
Seriously?
Howard Dean enhanced the Democratic Party’s credibility in parts of the country where the Democrats have been reluctant to mention their party in public. He began putting in place a long-term infrastructure for party growth, even while successfully juggling short-term opportunities this year. The Democrats appear to have picked up the House by about 30 seats and, amazingly, six Senate seats helped, in no small part, by the 50-state strategy (Montana, for instance). While the argument could be made that it would have been nice to have picked up even more seats, you can’t fault the chairman of the Democratic Party for underperforming in 2006.
If Howard Dean were to be canned, the blatant disrepsect that that would show to the netroots community could be fatal to the party in 2008.
They’ll keep Dean as chair. They don’t want a “Draft Dean” for President commotion on their hands.