Is Howard Dean Getting Screwed and Why?

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted February 9, 2009.

In reflecting on Dean's legacy, the most obvious place to start is the current Democratic trifecta. As was given cursory mention in his absence in Washington, Dean leaves office with the Democrats in possession of both houses of Congress and the White House. When Dean ran for president in 2004, Karl Rove was speaking seriously about a permanent Republican majority. Today, it makes more sense to speak of a permanently shrinking Republican minority. It is of course debatable how much this can be attributed to Dean's vision. But his supporters argue that the change Dean spearheaded had, and continues to play, a major role.

More than anything else, Dean's project involved changing the relationship between the national center of the Democratic Party and its hundreds of state and county offices.

"There's a lot of ink spilled on the personalities involved, [but] the heart of Howard's challenge was based on what he thought the role of the DNC should be," says Jim Dean, Howard's brother and director of Democracy for America, the organizational offshoot of the 2004 Dean campaign. "Howard came in with the belief that local parties and activists should be empowered locally, and that the DNC should build the party, not just fight elections."

Dean's idea was radical because it was not just limited to local chapters and activists in competitive districts and swing states. Dean's year-round, 50-state strategy sought to provide resources to corners of the country long-ago abandoned to what were considered permanent post-Reagan electoral shifts.

There was never a shortage of critics of this strategy -- among them major Dem party players Emanuel, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and James Carville -- some of whom called for Dean's resignation after the 2006 midterms, during what should have been a moment of appreciation. The critics preferred to see DNC money spread around in a more targeted and traditional manner, funding congressional and presidential candidates in swing states and districts, and not used to build party organizations based on some abstract notion of "empowerment."

But it turned out that building the party from the ground up got results, with a host of states suddenly in play. What's more, local and state Dem chapters were grateful for and reinvigorated by Dean's help, even if it was only a couple of staffers and a pinch from the national treasure chest.

As state and local party leaders await Tim Kaine's new plan for the DNC, expected by April, some have expressed concern that it may scale back Dean-style party building in favor of targeting close elections and pushing the presidential agenda.

"We know the party has to be Obamacentric, but our success these four years was owed to the fact that the staffers were able to help on any level," one state chair told CNN.com last month. "And if it now becomes, 'Do this one thing for the administration,' then you lose that foundation."

According to Jim Dean, the 50-state strategy has led to increased intraparty amity and better coordination, as well as some surprising electoral victories.

"Although people in D.C. initially criticized him, he brought the national party more in line with what people in the rest of the country really needed. Before his tenure at the DNC, the state parties feuded with the national party over resources," says Jim Dean. "Now the relationship between local and national parties has changed for the better. The Beltway media may have focused on the relationships and debates in D.C., but the real story is how the DNC went from a D.C. organization to national party organization in the eyes of Democrats around the country."

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Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance journalist.

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