100 Days and Counting

By Sam Graham-Felsen, AlterNet. Posted June 2, 2005.

No one wrote about Terry McAuliffe's first 100 days as the chair of the Democratic National Committee. I'm willing to bet the landmark didn't even occur to anyone, with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. McAuliffe himself. But when 100 days passes and his successor, Howard Dean -- the most highly anticipated, scrutinized, equally loathed and beloved DNC chair in recent memory -- is at the helm of the party, it's a different story. It is, in fact, a story.

It goes without saying that 100 days is an arbitrary and premature point at which to assess whether Dean is saving or screwing the party. Right-wing pundits have already started celebrating what they see as Dean's speedy march towards failure. Although Dean is hitting "record levels," according to DNC spokesperson Laura Gross, with a million-dollar-a-week fundraising pace, conservatives are gloating over RNC chair Ken Mehlman's $34.2 million-twice the amount Dean has raised so far.

And Dean's image problem was and still is a primary concern of party leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, who publicly opposed Dean's candidacy and privately urged him to tone down his rhetoric after being appointed Dean sent shudders through the Democratic establishment with his now-infamous suggestion in May that Tom Delay "go back to Houston, where he can serve his jail sentence."

Even Barney Frank, not exactly a tight-lipped centrist, said Dean's words were "overstate[d]," "unfair," and "just inappropriate." Meanwhile, the people who make up Dean's base -- progressives and grassroots activists eager for an overhaul of the Democratic Party -- haven't been too pleased either. Many are uncomfortable with the news that Dean is buddying up with establishment D.C. Democrats like Reid and New York Senator Chuck Schumer; others are uneasy with him spending time in Washington period.

On April 20 Dean told a Minnesota audience about his Iraq war stance, "Now that we're there, we're there and we can't get out? I hope the President is incredibly successful with his policy now."

Coming from a former presidential candidate whose momentum was built largely on a candid and unwavering anti-Iraq war platform, the statement prompted immediate outrage on the left, voiced in an open letter to Dean from longtime peace activist Tom Hayden. Dennis Kucinich followed Hayden's lead, asking Dean, "Did these words really come from the same man who claimed to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party? It was [our] hope and expectation that you would prevent the party from repeating its past drift to the Republican-lite center."

Dean's first major media appearance as DNC chair did little to abate the criticism. Appearing on Meet the Press on May 22nd, Dean endured an endless barrage of linguistic nitpicking from Tim Russert. Intent on perpetuating Dean's image as an unstable hothead, Russert gave the chairman little opportunity to explain his vision for the Party, instead tossing out gems like, "You said in December of 2003 that we shouldn't prejudge Osama bin Laden. How can you sit here and have a different standard for Tom DeLay and prejudge him?"

Republicans on the Hill snickered. And for the soundbyte-oriented Democratic establishment, this was proof positive of everything they'd warned about Dean. Hayden and Kucinich couldn't have been too happy about the performance either. Even though Dean stood firm on his criticism of Delay, he equivocated on abortion and didn't even approach the issue of withdrawal from Iraq.

It's no wonder then that Dean has avoided the national spotlight, with criticism being launched at him from all sides and media-jealous Democratic colleagues muttering about his inability to stay "on message." But perhaps the main reason that Dean's been AWOL from the Sunday talk show circuit is that he's been busy traveling the country, learning about the state of politics at the local level. Since he began as chair on February 12, Dean's priorities have been set less on cultivating a perfect, all-encompassing message for the Democratic Party and more on "showing up."

In the last three months, Dean has visited 18 states, where he has met with Democratic officials at the state and local level and promoted his plan to build the party infrastructure from the bottom up. Unlike McAuliffe, Dean isn't arriving in limousines; he's flying coach, paying for his own bus tickets, and carrying his own bags. And if you listen to the people that Dean has spent most of his tenure thus far speaking to -- people in some of the Reddest states of the country -- Dean is doing a fantastic job

Sam Graham-Felsen is co-author with The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel of the weekly online feature, Sweet Victories.

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