I attended my first Dean meetup in February, about a year ago. In the back of a local coffee shop ten people gathered to talk about the upcoming presidential election and the prospects of a little-known governor, who aimed at taking on the Bush administration. The political climate felt suffocating. Pressing questions that were obvious to us could not be voiced by a subservient national media, while every cornerstone of national achievement felt the chipping of the Bush-Cheney chisel. Since then, those who have supported Governor Dean have scaled mountains. We built the first presidential campaign without the funding of large industrial interests; we not only broke the deafening silence, we set the terms of discourse; and we have made the halls of Beltway tremble. Most importantly, we built a national progressive network that just a year ago simply did not exist.
But despite our high climb, we arrived at another valley. Although Dean is not out of the race yet, the odds are slim. Last winter's despair is here again... At the last meeting one supporter confided to me that with Dean nearly out of the race he thought further involvement was "a waste of my time". He may not come back next month. And that's a crying shame. While the Democrats may miss a historic opportunity by not nominating Dean, we--Dean supporters--risk making our own historic mistake by turning our backs on the network we have built. Mainstream Democrats may not have the courage to nominate a candidate with the sturdiest vertebrae, but we are not responsible for their mistakes. We are only responsible for ours. Failing to secure what we and Governor Dean have labored to achieve in this campaign would be a monumental failure.
In the aftermath of Iowa, two trends of thought are driving activists and volunteers away from the Dean progressive network. The first is a "my way or the highway" attitude which culminates in a vengeful spoiler syndrome. One member of the Kos community recently
advised others to "make them pay for voting for a do-nothing rather than a doer. I believe that Deaniacs could impact the election in the same way that Nader did in 2000." That is excellent advice for moving the political center further to the right. Electoral activism is a dirty business in which you never get 100% of what you want 100% of the time. Victory belongs to those who have been scaling the same part of the wall the longest. Currently that's Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist. We will either build a network to counterbalance theirs or we will find ourselves in the dungeon of radical right-wing policies.
Implicit in the thought of Dean supporters who disappear into gloominess is that the Dean campaign had only one goal---to win the White House. Once that goal is stifled, what is there to do but disperse? But Governor Dean's campaign is simply one attempt, among many, to bring politics closer to ordinary people and to make it work for them. As long as this goal still exists then it only makes sense to expand the network and find other channels for our energies. At the risk of offending many who can not imagine this grassroots campaign without Governor Dean, I would like to suggest that the Dean progressive network is more important than the Dean candidacy---it is even more important than the results of one election because it has the potential to harness future elections. Stirling Newberry has pointed out that "The internet is where TV was in the 1950's - the cutting edge of culture, with a disproportionately influential base - but still small. The "frequent" visitors to web sites were 10% of New Hampshire. They broke heavily for Dean. If that number were 30%, which is to say, the difference in television penetration between 1952 and 1956 - then Dean would have been within 2% of Kerry, a dead heat."
For all the above reasons we have a compelling motive to maintain the network created by Governor Dean's campaign. We have influenced the political process in a positive way and we can continue doing the same if we set forth a less ephemeral objective than winning one campaign. Nor should "evict Bush" be our ultimate objective; that, too, is a short-sighted goal. Imagine: if Bush were gone tomorrow, would poverty, injustice and environmental pollution disappear? Would a single liberty taken away by the PATRIOT Act be restored? Not unless there are people giving politicians the backbone to do what is right. It is therefore important to create organizations that will build on the momentum the Dean campaign created and act as watch dogs of progressive policies, in much the same way the ACLU acts as a guardian of civil liberties.
What should these organizations look like? One community member observes the advantages that come from sticking together:
"Deaniacs are only a core constituency because right at the moment we're organized. If we cease to remain organized at the end of the Dean campaign, we'll once again be relegated to being nothing more than votes to which the Democratic Party feels entitled..."
He suggests joining the ADA as a way to maintain organizational momentum. That may be one possible strategy on the national level, but starting with state-wide organizations may be a less risky way to capitalize of what we have built. In the process of helping a candidate win a nomination we have been engaged in 50 distinct elections. This made us create state-wide ties with groups, activists and meetups in other cities within our respective states. Maintaining these ties under a state-wide umbrella would be a natural, relatively easy and highly effective way to preserve organizational assets. But regardless the form, we need to create a forum in which we can meet to formulate and advance a progressive agenda. This is the challenge. The time is now.