You'll just have to bear with my fan-boy enthusiasm for a second as I reflect on a super night for local area Democrats. What a coup landing Howard Dean as the featured speaker for the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner!
I had a chance to speak with Dean directly (thank you, Dena Horton), and check in on what he's doing now after wrapping up such a successful turn as the DNC chair. And yes, he does feel vindicated about the 50-State Strategy, which turned out pretty well during his tenure that saw Democrats taking back Congress and the White House.
What Dean is up to now is focusing on the public option for health care, having just spent the day earlier in Portland with Congressman Earl Blumenauer. He's definitely sympathetic to those who support single-payer, since it pulls the health care debate into a more progressive direction, but it's definitely a situation of not letting "the perfect be the enemy of the good". Advocates for single-payer are in many ways their own worst enemy, and protesting his visit in Portland will do little to help their cause.
Regarding Dean's return to DFA, he described it as a return to activist politics, in search of mobilizing the grassroots in getting people involved in the health care discussion. He also plugged the new Stand with Dr. Dean web site as a way to get more involved with the health care issue. According to Dean, the public option means real reform, since individuals will get to decide whether they want public or privately provided health care.
Hard core Deaniacs will remember his "What I want to know" speech from 2003. Little remembered from that speech was Dean's repudiation of Nixon's Southern Strategy, and the use of coded language to divide the electorate along racial lines. I asked Governor Dean if the 2008 cycle was a direct repudiation of the Southern Strategy, and he agreed, pointing to elections in Alabama and Mississippi that Democrats were winning. In other words, it's not just the election of Obama that signals the end of the Southern Strategy.
What put the nail in the coffin of the Southern Strategy was the younger generation. They're multi-cultural, adept with technology, and they reject the politics of confrontation. It's an astute observation and one that Gen-X'ers like myself need to reconcile with.
Dean reminded everyone that you can't just take a vacation from politics, or bad things happen to the body politic. An engaged electorate acts as a check on what we just witnessed over the past eight years, an "extra-constitutional government" as Dean put it. It's also important to remain engaged now that the Democrats are in charge, since now is when the real work begins. We simply cannot allow "bi-partisanship" to sink meaningful reform, especially in health care policy.
I don't know anything about Vermont politics, but if Pat Leahy or Bernie Sanders retires, "Senator" Howard Dean has a nice ring to it.
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