Dean's legacy

As this article notes, Dean ran for President for three reasons: 1. to change the Democratic Party, 2. to change America, and 3. to change the President. While goal 3 will need to be pursued via proxy, the first two are the direct objectives of Democracy for America. This interesting piece in the Exeter News Letter (NH) gives an example of how the infrastructure that the Dean Phenomenon left in its wake is being put to use:

The group is aiming at politicians at all levels. Moyer studied the votes of the eight state representatives and senators for his district and found five of the eight habitually disagreed with him. He cited their recent votes in favor of school vouchers, which would provide public money to families to send their children to private school, as just one area where he differs.

Moyer said he is not a hard-line partisan and offered Sen. Carl Robertson as a Republican with whom he often agrees.

Proulx has made it his "pet project" to evict Republican state Sen. Russell Prescott from his seat. A frequent op-ed contributor to local and state newspapers, Proulx is keen to expose what he believes to be Prescott’s extreme right-wing views, citing the senator’s opposition to gay marriage and his attempts to "gut rational gun laws."

"We need significant numbers of progressive people running for state representative and winning," Moyer said.

The group is beginning the process of actively soliciting prospects. The Alliance will use its network and database of names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses to support candidates and inform and rally voters on issues they care about.

"We have built an infrastructure," Proulx said. "Now we want to use it."

They will also actively register voters.

"Bad politicians are elected by people who do not vote," Moyer said.

The question is, is this an isolated case or truly representative? Many Dean supporters are in a state of fugue. As things deterioriate in Iraq and at home and Kerry stays too far above the fray, there seems to be a large deficit in enthusiasm. But here we have an example of former Dean supporters moving forward, taking advantage of the head start that Dean gave them. The o-blog has been compiling commitments by Deaniacs to run for local office as well.

I suspect that there is a lot of activity out there below the surface (after all, ask yourself what our own Anna has been up to since Wisconsin :) ...