The New York Times political reporters continue to bury Howard Dean...now they're
predictively writing the obituary on the Dean for America movement:
His campaign, as he never tired of reminding us, was about "taking the country back," which seemed another way of saying it was basically about winning.
And what Dr. Dean and much of the news media now claim as his political legacy -- using the Internet to raise money, forcing his party toward confrontation -- is merely tactical. As LaFollette could have told him, a truly transcendent political campaign has to be rooted in something deeper than fervent rhetoric and small policy variations. It has to be daring enough to survive the candidacy itself.
In the end, the tragedy of Howard Dean's impressive grass-roots campaign is that he will be remembered not for any lasting reform agenda, but for the missed opportunity to create one.
Bai's interpretation of Dean's candidacy is bunk. What about the REAL message of the Dean campaign?
YOU HAVE THE POWER!
Furthermore, his bold prediction of total failure is yet more of the cynical, don't-participate-in-politics, your-vote-is-meaningless message that the New York Times has been propagating this entire election cycle.
I wrote to onthetrail@nytimes.com to tell them two things:
- Howard Dean's message wasn't "basically about winning" and his campaign didn't just bring "merely tactical" advances to politics. It was about making politics a broad-based participatory process, rather than a consumer-based buy-each-vote system. Peer-to-peer, not one-to-many. Active, not passive. Hopeful, not cynical. Proud, not fearful. Honest, not easy.
- Howard Dean's legacy hasn't been written yet, and it's going to be written by the participants, not by the pundits.