Nation-Building

Below is the text of an article by Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation. She had a nice review of Dean's latest book, You Have The Power.

I Just thought going into these last few days of this election that it was a nice reminder to all of us that we should be proud of the work we have done through Dean for Kerry, the left and the DLC: Enjoying the BACKBONE gang?

Of course, there's still a lot of work to do yet to get rid of Bush, if it really is possible. Still, Dean is right that a Kerry win is simply a stopgap for the twisted Bush effort. (I mean, to have my patriotism questioned by people who are now working hard and proudly to suppress and deny people their right to vote in anticipation of a massive turnout? How American is that? As American as apple pie, I suppose, in the minds of Tom Delay's busloads of angry mobs ready to terrorize Floridians again in the name of democracy.)

Good Luck to all of us next Tuesday, but really, the fight kind of begins for us the next day doesn't it?
Here are Katrina's thoughts about Dean's thoughts:

I wrote nearly twelve months ago in this space about the importance of building progressive strength in 2004 and beyond. A year later, progressives have hope in the decade ahead, thanks in part to Howard Dean. Dean's new book, You Have the Power, is an eloquent attack on Bush's failed record. At its core, however, is Dean's belief that progressives must look beyond November 2nd to achieve a progressive majority.

For starters, tactics matter, argues Dean. "By...establishing a permanent election-to-election presence on the American political scene through think-tanks, foundations, and grassroots organizations," Dean writes, the radical right has achieved political power. Extremists can be beat at their own game, though.

"We need to...have a permanent campaign, which is what the Republicans have done for the last twenty years," Dean recently argued in a Mother Jones' interview, a belief echoed powerfully in his book. After Election Day, progressives can take one month off "and then everybody's got to get back to work."

While Dean has endorsed John Kerry--and is traveling around the country drumming up support for his former rival--he recognizes that victory in this election means the defeat of the right, not the triumph of a progressive movement. Dean understands that no matter what happens next month, it is vital to continue to coordinate, organize and build the infrastructure to drive progressive ideals into the political debate and electoral arena.
In addition to publishing this excellent primer, Dean's new political action group, "Democracy for America" (DFA), is on its way to becoming a central station for progressive action across the country, finding and supporting the next generation of progressive leaders from school boards to Capitol Hill and, most importantly, inspiring members of what the late Senator Paul Wellstone liked to call "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

DFA's candidates--called "Dean's Dozens"--receive donations and volunteer assistance through DFA's efforts online and on the ground. And Dean's endorsement should not be underestimated; as one Georgia Democrat running for Congress put it, it "jump-started my campaign."

DFA has endorsed and raised money for a school board member in Huntsville, Alabama and mayor of Salt lake City, Utah. It is supporting relatively anonymous candidates like Democrat Richard Morrison who is running against corrupt House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in Sugarland, Texas and more well-known ones like Tom Daschle, who is in a tough re-election fight in South Dakota. And DFA--working with other progressive groups--is also helping candidates running for county commission, city council and state legislatures nationwide.

In less than eight months, DFA has supported nearly 1,000 progressive candidates for office, raised more than $1 million in its first fundraising quarter alone and donated $756,605 to its chosen electoral fights.
We're going to "help build the Democratic Party" by helping to "keep [progressives] moving up and up" in Democratic Party ranks, says Laura Gross, DFA's Communications Director.

To that end, DFA has aligned itself with progressive groups such as Progressive Majority and 21st Century Democrats. What's important about this new moment says Gloria Totten, Progressive Majority's director, is that "we progressives are no longer willing to continue to be right on the issues and lose elections." Winning matters.

Dean's success in 2003, and progressives' future victories, may well rest in part on a new politics of authenticity. Dean was a straight-talking presidential candidate, who took on Bush in an aggressive and bracing way and challenged a cowed Democratic Party to get a spine transplant.

As Kevin Phillips points out in his astute Washington Post review of Dean's book, the Vermont governor was and remains correct in his conclusion that "when you trade your values for the hope of winning, you end up losing and having no values--so you keep losing."

Dean continues to speak out for values and issues that have received too little attention in this campaign, including the importance of restoring a balance between corporate power and citizens' rights, closing the "wealth gap," and fighting media consolidation so more diverse and democratic voices can be heard on airwaves across America.
Holding Republicans' feet to the fire has always been one of Dean's strengths. When rumors started to circulate that Bush had a secret post-election plan to reinstate a military draft, Dean published a column on DFA's website demanding answers from the White House about how it will meet its current commitments without resorting to a draft. He also posted a petition which will be delivered to the White House before the election. (Click here to join the more than 90,000 others who have already added their names to the petition.)

"The man stands his ground in a fight," William Greider said about Dean in The Nation last December. "When someone jabs him, he jabs back."

Dean hasn't wallowed in defeat. With a renewed focus on building a progressive majority in America, Dean is providing new hope. By taking the fight to the radical right and DLC Democrats, Dean's message is coming through loud and clear: progressives won't go away anytime soon.

Continue reading/discuss Katrina vanden Heuvel: Dean's Forward Thinking ...

Any comments on this poll which has Bush at 18% among African-Americans?

Continue reading/discuss African-American Vote ...

The theme that the tough fight over Wisconsin represents a serious problem for the Kerry campaign is misguided. You could just as easily mention President Bush's 43% job approval in Ohio. He can't win with that number, and if it holds up and Kerry wins those 20 electoral votes, it's Bush who needs to flip at least two blue states while holding on to all the remaining red.

(Cross-posted at my blog.)

Continue reading/discuss Expectations and Ohio ...

link is an mp3. it's Hilarious :)

Continue reading/discuss Dean plugs Yahoo ...

Have they saved the best for last?

UPDATE: Cheney never met Edwards. Bush doesn't know he owns a timber company and denies saying he wasn't that concerned about Bin Laden. Does the Republican ticket have some sort of memory problems?

UPDATE: My tax cut joke is here.

Continue reading/discuss Tonight's Debate ...

Barack Obama was in Wisconsin supporting Russ Feingold. As a Feingold volunteer, I found this comments inspiring. If you do, too, click here. Let's make the midwest a new center of our brand of politics!

Continue reading/discuss Obama and Feingold ...

There's really not a lot to say about this. What to do about it is discussed at the link.

Continue reading/discuss The Sinclair Issue ...

"The biggest single difference between the debates this year and four years ago is that President Bush cannot simply make promises. He has a record. And I hope that voters will recall the last time Mr. Bush stood on stage for a presidential debate. If elected, he said, he would support allowing Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada. He promised that his tax cuts would create millions of new jobs. He vowed to end partisan bickering in Washington. Above all, he pledged that if he put American troops into combat: "The force must be strong enough so that the mission can be accomplished. And the exit strategy needs to be well defined."

-- Al Gore, writing in the New York Times

Continue reading/discuss Debate Discussion thread ...

Luke Skywalker versus Emperor Palpatine. Discuss

"Your overconfidence is your weakness."

"Your faith in your friends is yours."

Continue reading/discuss Veep debate discussion thread ...

This promises to be interesting indeed:

Three-time Republican presidential nomination hopeful Pat Buchanan and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean will go head to head in Irvine Auditorium on Oct. 19, the Social Planning and Events Committee's Connaissance branch announced Friday.

The event, open to the Penn community and moderated by Annenberg School for Communication Dean Michael Delli Carpini, will center on the issues of the upcoming presidential election.

"This event is all about informing those who are uninformed," Connaissance board member and College senior Mark Guterman said. "Both of these leaders can speak very honestly and openly about the parties and their respective platforms."

Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans chairman and Wharton senior David Copley expressed surprise, but also excitement, at the prospect of a debate between Buchanan and Dean.

"These are not party politicians," he said. "Pat Buchanan has ticked off the Republican party, and Howard Dean tried to remove [Democratic National Committee] Chairman Terry McAuliffe. They aren't scared to share their opinions, and they are at very opposite edges of the political spectrum. There promises to be fireworks."

President of the Penn College Democrats and College senior Rich Eisenberg said part of the event's value lies in the clout of the two speakers.

"Whenever you have high-profile speakers coming to campus to speak to students, it's a good thing," he said.

thanks, Barb, for the heads-up...

Continue reading/discuss Dean to debate Buchanan ...

What did you think?

Here are some of my impressions, in somewhat random order. I didn't want to live-blog it, I preferred to let the debate sink in and percolate a bit. I'm cross-posting to UNMEDIA and my Red State and my DailyKos diaries as well.

Bush scored a point with the Korean multi-lateral issue, rather than Kerry's focus on bilateral talks. While its true that Bush could not convincing articulate why multilateral talks including China were superior, neither could Kerry articulate why they were inferior, and on that issue, the burden of proof is with Kerry to demonstrate why things should change. True, N. Korea went nuclear on Bush's watch, but what's Kerry going to DO about it on his watch?

Kerry's point that 30-some countries had a greater WMD capability than Iraq was, as Josh puts it, a hammer-blow indeed. It completely shut down the Bush line that invading Iraq was justified because Saddam was a threat.

I found Bush too repetitive on the "Kerry is inconsistent" thing - Kerry took the time to respond each time, and overall Bush ended up retreating to that point anyway, making it seem like he'd run out of material. Did he prepare for this debate or not? By falling back on that issue, and giving Kerry more chances to refute it with different emphasis, he just ended up giving Kerry more time to insulate himself. In past debates Bush would have been more subtle, and let "evidence" make the accusation. Here, Bush just tried to bludgeon his point across, and Kerry's poise in answering it each time strengthened him.

Bush's point that Iranian sanctions didn't begin on his watch is well-taken. It's Kerry's fault really for not articulating what he'd do specifically. The whole Iranian discussion was short on specifics from both sides, which translates to Bush's advantage, since it's Kerry's burden of proof.

Kerry's point about Tora Bora was also effective, and again Bush had no real response. Simply put, we diverted resources from Afghanistan to Iraq - and this fact clearly put Bush on the defensive. Having to exclaim "I know Osama bin Laden attacked us" raise the question immediately, why haven't you even spoken is name, then? Again paraphrasing Josh, national security is supposed to be Bush's core strength, and the fact that Kerry can make these critiques to which Bush has essentially no answer does not bode well for him.

I liked Kerry's emphasis on Darfur - all Bush has done is send humanitarian aid (much needed of course). He'd be more aggressive in helping the African Union intervene. Should American troops be needed, though, we have a problem again due to over-stretch - and nice emphasis on why he wants to enlarge the military for non-Iraq missions. A moral duty, indeed. Bush responds weakly, but doesn't lay out a specific plan of how he'd intervene beyond mere humanitarian aid.

"What's the message going to be -- Please join us in Iraq for a grand diversion?" Bush's rejoinder to Kerry's claim that he can deliver foreign troops is devastating - Bush's only real hit of the evening, but a very good jujitsu of Kerry's own campaign rhetoric against him. Kerry recovered but not gracefully.

"We busted the AQ Khan network." Sorry, Mr. President. That's a lie. The reality is that Bush looked the other way while Pakistani-national-hero Khan walked away untouched for his role in disseminating the nuclear materials that Bush now claims to be concerned about. The fact that Bush cut funding for proliferation control also resonates here. It's hard for me to gauge how well Kerry prosecuted the case against Bush on this score to the public jury, because I know more of the detail than has made the cut to the national media. I suspect that most people don't know the backstory of AQ Khan and thus take Bush at his word here, but Bush's inability to address Kerry's funding critique and the 13-year statistic (which Bush never disputed) will hurt him. Bush didn't raise missile defense as a counter, either, which surprised me - though Kerry would likely have been ready by pointing out that the defense system has never been successfully tested and probably won't work.

I really enjoyed the friendly platitudes between the candidates in the middle, with warm respect about each others' family. I find it humbling to a degree. I'm not such a cynic that I think Bush or Kerry was being insincere. And I think it's necessary to resolve to try and reduce the projection of one-sided partisan bile onto the candidates themselves. I bet Bush and Kerry would be shocked to read some of what is written about their opponents in the diaries at Red State or Daily Kos. When I eventually launch my own Scoop site, I'm going to have to remember this part of the debate as a guide for moderation of tone.

Kerry clearly won, at least initially in the public eye. Bush is clearly not used to being questioned, even supposed tough dogs like O'Reilly and Russert have never really held him to the kind of scrutiny that, say, Howard Dean had to endure. Given that Bush is insulated from opposing views within his administration and cocooned from protestors on the campaign trail (attendees to Bush events are required to sign loyalty pledges), he's grown quite soft. His irritation, especially on split-screen when Kerry was speaking, made him look petty and insecure - akin to the glance-at-the-watch or the exaggerated-sigh. Just remember that the polls called the first debate for Gore, too, but the pundits inverted that judgment a few days later, so I'm still pessimistic as to whether Kerry's performance really did him any favors. Given the conservative blogger consensus that Bush did not do well either, though, I think that Bush's campaign strategy of ignore the swing vote and focus on exciting the base seems rather wise in hindsight.

Continue reading/discuss Debate discussion thread ...