It strikes me that, as we all arm ourselves to go to battle with the DNC - and with each other - over the future of this party, that many of you who are newer here do not understand the history of this site, of how we came to believe what we believe, of why we are certain that the Democrats need deep structural reform - and why that led us to Dean.
I say this not because I don't like the prospect of battle. The time to fight over the long-term future of the Democratic Party has long since come, and it's time to find out which side you are really on.
But that cannot happen until we understand what is really happening. I get the impression that many here do not understand. I am going to arrogate to myself that project.
This is organized into 2 parts. Part I looks at why we backed Dean in '03 and why many of us back him for DNC Chair. Part II looks at the broader issue of the party and tries to remind people of our credibility issue, the issue that none of you seem to have raised.
Part I: Dean, Dems, and Us
To understand this, you have to go back to 2000. Many of us had already broken with the Democratic Party, over trade, over war, over corporate power. Lots of us voted Nader. Others saw the folly to that and voted Gore, but only to fend off Bush.
We also had this battle over DNC chair before. Many of us opposed the selection of Terry McAuliffe as a sell-out to corporate interests and DLC centrism. But we could not overcome the fact that he was Clinton's choice.
So we saw the first 9 months of Bush's presidency unfold with mounting alarm. Senate Democrats knuckled under to Bush on nearly everything, from appointments (a lot of us worked our ass off to defeat Ashcroft's confirmation) to No Child Left Behind to tax cuts. We only won the ANWR battle.
September 11 cut even those meager gains out from under us. We saw Bush rally the nation to his cause, and then saw him take that and use it to invade Iraq.
The months from October 2002 to March 2003 were the depths of darkness for most of us. And it was then that Kos started this site. We had seen the Dems get crushed in the midterm elections in November 2002, just after they voted for a war we knew was wrong. We then had to watch the neo-cons ram war down all our throats, and then, invade Iraq. And the disaster many of us predicted slowly unfolded.
The Democrats' capitulations to Bush between January 2001 and March 2003 convinced us that the party status quo was hopeless, that we needed someone to stand up to Bush, to rally the grassroots, to take our country back.
It was in THAT spirit that we found Howard Dean.
That point is important. WE found Dean. WE anointed him. He did not find us or mobilize us. Instead we chose him to be the vehicle for the party reform that by summer 2003 we had all decided was necessary.
Why did we like Dean? Because he spoke our language. He understood, like we did, that the Democrats had been losing elections and power because we had strayed from our base. Not that the base is leftist or uber-liberal - but that we believe in our own values, and our Democratic politicians were repeatedly selling those values out.
Dean was a contrast. He promised to speak our values, clearly, and with conviction. He was honest, sincere, credible. And he knew to reach out to other voters. He was right when he said we needed to talk to the folks with Confederate flags on their trucks. He never said we had to LISTEN to them or do what they wanted us to do. But he was right that we at least had to reach out with honesty.
Dean made his run - with our support - and lost. We then followed the Kerry groundswell, out of a desire to use what seemed to be a strong candidate. Again, we pushed Kerry to where he was. He rode our wave, our support, our money, our votes. Without our own initiative he would have gotten nowhere - certainly not 48% and 250+ EVs.
So when we do this whole DNC battle - realize we already fought this battle. And we already, long ago, decided that reform, not DLC centrism, was our choice. And we also decided that Dean represented the best chance at that reform.
I see no need to go through the whole process again. Many folks have shown up here recently and are unaware of this history. They saw us as a Democratic blog, not a progressive reform blog. That is their error. We support Democrats, but not blindly. And we supported them in '04 out of a realization that our future lay with them - but also that they needed reform.
Part II: Credibility
And reform will not come without credibility.
This is what so few people seem to understand.
The Democratic Party has no credibility with voters. To be precise, it lacks credibility with the centrists.
So to assume that if we choose a Vilsack or whomever and reach out to those centrists - without reforming ourselves - that they will believe what we say is to not be aware of reality.
If we choose a Vilsack, engage in no effort to remake our voice or our language or our organization or our image, and instead assume that a moron who could not deliver his own state to Kerry can reach out to centrists, we will lose more seats in '06, and more seats in '08.
This is because many, many voters who share our values, share our ideals, mistrust the party. To them, Dems speak with a forked tongue.
That's why Rove ran the campaign he did - his whole goal was to remind enough voters that Kerry was some liberal elitist, and as such, he cannot be trusted.
It worked. Many people, who distrust the radical right, voted Bush out of fear of liberal elitist lying conniving deceitful Democrats.
How do we move beyond that? With more of the same?
No. We need a fresh start. We need new people at the helm - people who are committed to true reform. Not people who simply want to preserve the failed DLC centrism of the past. And certainly not someone whose only issue is making sure Iowa goes first.
If we rebuild our message, our outreach, but send up the same old people to sell it, it will be all for naught, because nobody will buy it.
Can Dean? Who knows. What we do know is that he is at least credible when he says he wants to rebuild the Democrats. People will believe that. And once that is achieved, we can nominate whomever we want in 2008.
Conclusion
If you've made it this far, I congratulate you.
The point is this: we already decided we want reform of the party. We decided this long ago. Nothing will convince us that more DLC centrism is the answer.
And a major reason this is so is because of the credibility gap of our leading Democrats. Kerry couldn't shake it. Gore couldn't shake it. Daschle couldn't shake it. Only the combination of someone new and someone committed to thinking new, thinking creatively, willing to do things in a new way, will we reverse our fortunes.
So that means Vilsack will seal our fate. So will Shaheen, so will Ickes. To reach those voters who we have lost, we need not just a new person to sell a message, we need a new message and someone people will trust when it is sold to them.
I hope that is clear enough.