Nation-Building

This article is no puff peice. It takes a good hard look at Dean's positions, and also attempts to put his candidacy into historical/political context. Read the article for yourself, but here's a sample: "Now that Al Gore has finally decided to let sleeping chads lie and announced his surprise decision not to seek a presidential rematch against George Bush in 2004, the field for Democratic contenders has been left wide open. Who will get the party nomination? Gore’s 2000 running mate and political heavyweight Senator Joseph Lieberman? The veteran Massachusetts senator, multi-millionaire and decorated Vietnam War veteran John Kerry? Or an obscure governor from a tiny state with little campaign money and a virtual political unknown? You may scoff, but anonymous Democrat governors have tended to do rather well at emerging from nowhere to win the party nomination before unseating an incumbent president. Look no further than Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992...

Dean was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on Sunday Dec. 22nd, on ABC's This Week . Link goes to the show's main website - when they make a transcript available, we will add the direct link. PunditWatch had this to say about the appearance: Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean, appearing on This Week, took credit, along with Al Gore, for President Bush’s current Iraq policy, then claimed the US would become a “second tier power” in 10-15 years if Bush’s policies are continued. Is this a fair characterization? only the transcript can say. Glenn Reynolds also commented on Dean's appearance - he didn't mention any comments about "second-tier power" status but also had a negative impression: I also caught George Stephanopoulos grilling Howard Dean, and thought that Stephanopoulos did pretty well, while Dean was visibly waffling in response to some rather pointed questions. UPDATE: the transcript is not available for free, but you ...

Vermont Public Radio ran a 5-part radio series from Dec. 17 - 21 focused on Howard Dean's presidential run in the context of Vermont history and influence on national politics. The five part series is also available online. Here is the excerpt and direct links to transcripts and audio from the VPR website: Gov. Howard Dean believes he has a message and possibly a mission. He's considering whether to mount a bid for the country's highest office. The possibility raises many issues that are explored by Vermont Public Radio in the week-long series, "Vermont and the Presidency." The series looks at the governor as a "new kind" of Democrat. It considers viewpoints from New Hampshire, where Dean could have significant name recognition. VPR examines the monumental fund-raising effort that would have to occur. And the series will look at the two Vermonters who did become president as well as the role of the Vermont mystique. Part One: Exploration Gove...

Jerome has posted an entry to the MyDD weblog regarding the dis-connect with the polls, which show Dean at low single digits, and the fledging support that Dean is getting from the netroots of Democratic internet activists: Howard Dean has been busy, there are a number of new posts on the Dean 2004 weblog . OK, so Dean is still polling 1-4% nationally, so what. Look at the netroots. Democrats.com has a weekly straw poll . Over the four weeks it's been done, with Gore included, Dean has finished a cumulative second. Here's where you go to sign up to vote . Here's one of many Democratic Underground threads that have popped up in support of Dean since Gore has dropped out. The comments section on the MyDD post has superb commentary and analysis. However, despite the strong support of the Internet political community, the Dean campaign has been strangely slow to get organized on the web. The DeanForAmerica website has a broken link for online contributions w...

Rick Ridder, graduate of Middlebury College in VT and veteran of Hart, Clinton, and Bradley's campaigns, will direct Dean's presidential campaign: Ridder said from Denver that he would move to Burlington by the first of the year to direct Dean’s presidential effort. Ridder, 49, who is married and has children ages 20, 18, and 16, was a member of Middlebury College’s class of 1976, although he said he didn’t get his diploma for a year because his interest in presidential campaigns took him away from school too much to get his degree on time. Ridder said he had a passing acquaintance from school with another prominent Middlebury College graduate who’s involved in politics: Vermont Gov.-elect James Douglas. Ridder currently is the president and co-founder of Ridder/Braden, a Denver-based political consulting firm. He volunteered on presidential campaigns in 1968 and 1972, but got his real start in 1984 and again in 1988 when he worked for Gary Hart’s campaign. He also ...

"In his presidential bid, Vermont governor Howard Dean hopes to bridge the gulf between New England and the Western states, and bypass the socially conservative South. Should John Kerry be worried?" This is the profile on Dean by The Phoenix, the liberal weekly in Boston. It's good, here's a snip: Afterward, off camera, Dean asked Keller how he performed. The pair discussed the relative brevity of Dean’s responses, and the governor appeared proud of the short answers he managed to give to complicated questions. "One thing that helps," he offered, "is that I know what I think. I don’t care what the polls say." Dean didn’t target any particular candidate with this comment. He could have had in mind any number of leading politicians prone to verbosity. But his comments couldn’t help but bring to mind Kerry, whose performance on NBC’s Meet the Press on December 1, during which he announced his decision to form a presidential-campaign explor...

2004: PRESIDENTAL PROSPECTS: NYT's Profile of Howard Dean When former Vice President Al Gore and Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes" ran through the potential Democratic field as Mr. Gore dropped out of the race on Sunday night, neither mentioned Mr. Dean. Yet Mr. Dean, 54, hopes he can mimic the maverick victory of another little-known governor, Jimmy Carter. His standing in some early polls in New Hampshire, while in single digits, has been comparable to that of richer, more prominent contenders like Representative Richard A. Gephardt and Senator John Edwards. And his dark-horse status and scrappy personality have combined to let him take stands — like his call to roll back almost all of President Bush's $1.3 billion tax cut — that make him stand out. "The disadvantage is all the other guys in the race on the Democratic side have national fund-raising organizations; I don't," Mr. Dean said at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan the other day, between ...

"Dean himself sees his position as a non-member of Congress as an asset, especially after Al Gore's decision to stay out of the race. He told CNN Monday night: "Now that the vice president is out I am so very different than all the other candidates who are running, all of whom are from inside the Beltway, because I'm a governor."

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D) "became the first 2004 Democratic presidential candidate to hire an Iowa coordinator, naming former state Democratic Party executive director Jeani Murray to lead his caucus campaign," the Des Moines Register reports (via Taegan Goddard's Political Wire ): A former state Democratic Party executive director... Jeani Murray, of Ames, also is a former chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell of Iowa and most recently managed Democrat John Norris' unsuccessful challenge of Rep. Tom Latham in Iowa's 4th U.S. House District. Murray, 33, became director of the Iowa Democratic Party in May of 2000 after serving as Boswell's chief of staff for four years. Her role as party chief during the 2000 presidential election gave her familiarity with the state party organization, she said. "I've been involved in Iowa Democratic politics for a decade and, as the former executive director, I know a lot of party officials, whi...

Courtesy of Damian McBride in the UK, comes this article in the London Times. It is interesting to see a UK perspective on the Presidential race, since the leaership of America is of vital interest to our greatest ally. Also note that Dean's candidacy is being taken seriously in Israel as well as the UK - Dean was recently in Israel and met with Ariel Sharon. The article illustrates how Dean uses his position on the issues in true opposition mode, with a clear statement of how he is different from Bush, and why that difference is positive. For example, he links Bush's incestous environmental (lack of) policy to foreign policy andthe War on Terrorism: Vermont also has one of the most progressive environmental programmes in America, anathema to a White House administration dominated by former oil executives. “The President has no energy policy, so he is beholden to the Saudis and cannot stop Saudi money being channelled to Hamas,” Dr Dean says. “This lack of an energy po...

Governor Dean put in an appearance on Monday on Connie Chung's show on CNN. While brief, the appearance gave the governor a chance to distinguish himself from the other potential candidates. He made it a point to state that he is the only candidate who, so far, has stood up for true Democratic values. Here is a brief transcript of the interview: CHUNG: Al Gore has made it official. He's out of the race for the White House, presumably to take on President George W. Bush in 2004. The former vice president announced his decision in a "60 minutes" interview and explained it when he met with reporters today. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My reasons, as I said last evening, didn't come down to any single factor. But because I have run for president twice before and because a race this time around would have focused on a Bush-Gore rematch, I felt that the focus of that race would inevitably have been more on the pas...

From ABC's The Note on 12/12/02: Global Strategy Group/polling company survey of 200 likely IOWA caucus attendees shows: WITH GORE: Gore 37%, Kerry 17, Gephardt 15, Daschle 10, Edwards 2, Dean 1. WITHOUT GORE: Gephardt 26%, Kerry 18, Lieberman 16, Daschle 12, Edwards 4, Dean 1. This last place showing is astonishing given that Dean has spent most of the past year in Iowa. However, this poll predates Gore's announcement. It is possible that the reality of Gore withdrawing will affect people's opinions in a way that a theoretical question could not predict.

This article in the Rutland Herald is completely devoted to eDean's reaction to Gore's withdrawal from the 2004 race: He said Gore’s decision would not affect his campaign strategy. “I am doing this because I think the country needs to change in ways that none of the other candidates have spoken to,” he said.

I confess to being surprised by Gore's decision, just like everyone else who thought his Barbara Walters interview was part of a staged PR rollout.: "I personally have the energy and drive and ambition to make another campaign, but I don't think it's the right thing for me to do," Gore told CBS's "60 Minutes." "I think that a campaign that would be a rematch between myself and President Bush would inevitably involve a focus on the past that would in some measure distract from the focus on the future that I think all campaigns have to be about." ... Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont officially declared in the spring that he was running. "What it does is make sure there's no front-runner," Dean said after learning of Gore's decision. The candidate who benefits most is Howard Dean. The true impact of Dean on the field was always filtered out by inclusion of Gore in polls - it will be interesting to see how Dean...

A Marist poll shows that Edwards now polls behind Howard Dean - indicating that the crowded field of Democratic clones is an advantageous playing field for a candidate like Dean who is actually memorably different. Gore and Kerry still lead the pack, and Dean has yet to break out of single digits: The telephone poll of 425 registered Democrats and independents was conducted from Dec. 2 to Wednesday and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 5 percentage points. Gore, the former vice president, has said he will announce in January if he will again seek the Democratic presidential nomination. Kerry has formed an exploratory committee to boost his candidacy. Among other potential Democratic contenders, only Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Gore's runningmate two years ago, was in double digits in the new poll, with 10 percent. The poll found Vermont Gov. Howard Dean favored by 6 percent of potential primary voters, Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri at 5 perc...