Pre-emptive defense: One of the potential criticisms of Dean likely will be the fact that his opponents and the press distorted his positions. This criticism will come in one of two way: (1) From people who actually bought those distortions, or (2) from people who didn't buy them, but will point to the fact that they got through and say we can't afford to have that happen.

The answer to this inevitable criticism is simple: During the primary campaign, Dean did not have the party behind him, backing him up, and countering the distortions. It was, after all, a primary campaign, with every candidate for themselves.

Were Dean to be head of the DNC, that would no longer be the case.

Not avoiding those questions, but FYI, there is a transcript of Dean's conversations with Meetups that happened around the country on November 3. Read it all, of course, but here's the vaguely relevant bit:

Democracy for NYC: We have 75 people here tonight! How do we take control of the DNC?

HD: The DNC is at a crossroads. They have questions to ask themselves.

I'm all for this. I think that Dean's outside-the-beltway/Democratic establishment personality and his authentic, sometimes bracing speaking style would do us a lot of good. One of the things that may have done us in this year is the perception that Democrats are latte-drinking, urban-dwelling, New York Times-reading intellectuals who can't connect with regular Americans.

(Never mind the fact that Dean, like Bush, is about as aristocratic as they come. He still looks like a longshoreman to me.)

One thing worries me, however. If Edwards is the presumptive nominee in 2008 (a big if, I realize) he needs to find a high-profile job that keeps in him the public eye. If Edwards isn't the head of the DNC, what else can we find for him to do?

I'll bet the overwhelming majority of voters don't know who heads the DNC or the RNC and most of those who do are already very committed to a party.

So I don't think it's a high-profile job suitable as a lead-in to an Edwards campaign. Nor do I think Howard Dean's reputation with voters is relevant so I wouldn't disqualify him on that basis.

If I had to pick a person based on no factor other than "most likely to succeed in leading the party to electing a Democratic President in 2008" I'd probably pick Bill Clinton.

Apparently, this is already a proto-meme.

Daily Kos:

The McAuliffe reign has ended in disaster, with the Democratic Party in worse position electorally than when he came in as Chair in February 2001. We have lost seats in the House and Senate, and failed to cleanly take out the Worst President Ever.

While McAuliffe was an artful fundraiser, the party continued to lack the ability to develop a clear message or properly frame the political debate. And it's been killing us.

Even if Kerry can pull off the victory, it's clear the Democratic Party as currently constituted is on its deathbed. It needs reforms, and it needs them now. Quite frankly, the status quo simply won't cut it.

Howard Dean for DNC Chair.

Heading the DNC is too small a job for Bill Clinton to be satisfied. He's in the "big picture" part of his public life, if he continues to have a public life. I imagine he'd rather be, say, head of the UN more than be head of the DNC.

Doretta writes, "I'll bet the overwhelming majority of voters don't know who heads the DNC or the RNC and most of those who do are already very committed to a party. So I don't think it's a high-profile job suitable as a lead-in to an Edwards campaign."

I'll disagree. Right now, the party has no leadership. Harry Reid is on his way, but nice guy that he is, he's not exactly magnetic. Nancy Pelosi? Love her dearly, but an SF liberal is not what we want to portray us out there.

Here's the example that proves the point: George H.W. Bush. He was RNC Chair from 1973-74. Just a few years later in 1980, he ran for President (the first chance after Ford left).

Either Dean or Edwards is fine by me. Both would excite the base, organize the party mechanics, and raise money in buckets.

Corrolary: Ostracize the DLC. Here's how their official take on the aftermath begins:

In the aftermath of the 2004 elections, Democrats should be proud of the united effort they and their candidates made. But we have to face facts: We got our clocks cleaned up and down the ballot. This is no time for finger pointing and recriminations, but it is time for some honest discussion about the outcome and its significance.

And here's how it ends:

There will be a powerful temptation for Democrats to simply go to the mattresses, fight Republicans tooth and nail, and hope for a big midterm sweep in 2006. That would be a mistake, just as it was a mistake to believe that Bush's weakness would be enough to produce a victory in 2004. It's time for Democrats to clearly stand for values, principles, and ideas that will earn us the opportunity to become the majority party of the future.

Emphasis mine, because it underscores that the DLC is part of the regime of the Democratic Party which needs to change (regime change, after all, begins at home).

First, their disdain for "fight[ing] Republicans tooth and nail" is actually their way of saying Democrats should simply try to somehow refine the methods espoused by both the DNC and DLC in the past three election cycles (2000, 2002, 2004), rather than, in some very real sense, start over.

Second, note how the DLC tries to undercut the critics of business as usual when it comes to party leadership by insinuating that those critics simply "hope for a big midterm sweep in 2006". No one I know is sitting around "hoping" for anything such thing. The people I know are saying that we have to work our asses off to make anything even close to that happen -- but, critically, that work will only, well, work, if this DNC and DLC namby-pamby garbage is tossed overboard.

The DLC's brain death surfaces as well in Ed Kilgore's item (which led me to the DLC piece I mentioned above), when he says this:

... We do not think this is a good time for a "struggle for the soul" of the Democratic Party; the unity we achieved in this campaign is a precious asset that it would be stupid to throw away, and moreover, we are all complicit in the mistakes our party keeps making.

Moreover, and I will say this personally, you won't get any argument from New Democrats that the Dean/MoveOn legacy of this campaign--the ability to build passionate grassroots organizations, and to raise money from small donors--should be thrown away, either. But in the end, the problem we had this year was not a shortage of money, volunteers, organization, excitement, or candidate charisma: it was a shortage of message. ...

Taking the first paragraph first, Kilgore nicely sidesteps any examination of the nature of the Democrats' unity this year, and just how much of it likely was a combination of frustration with Bush and the belief that we might actually be able to be rid of him -- rather than, as Kilgore perhaps seems to believe, that Democrats actually specifically believed in what their party was doing in this campaign.

He then goes on to pretend as if the Democrats ever really capitalized on what Dean and his supporters did, when they did not, and then adds a little lie about the premise that we had "candidate charisma" in the person of John Kerry.

This is how the DNC and DLC think. They've escaped into a reality of their own making, which is precisely the sort of thing I thought we were trying to avoid by seeking Bush's removal from office.

in fact, the way his campaign imploded within 2 weeks indicates that he had grassroots enthusiasm and little else.

See my previous pre-emptive defense of criticisms of how Dean's campaign played out. In a primary campaign, it's every candidate for themselves. For various reasons and as a result of various factors, some the responsibilty of the candidate and some not, any given campaign can fail or succeed.

What we're discussing here isn't a situation in which Dean would be out on his own, competing against other Democrats for attention and loyalty and resources. So the two situations are not comparable in the manner you suggest.

Dean? As he himself said, "Wooo-HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

That will win you some red states. Sure.

You mean the scream that the media blew into something that it actually wasn't, as evidenced by all the video that surfaced too late, showing what it was like for the crowd that was actually there?

In retrospect, I think Dean would have been destroyed by Bush - mostly because actual "real life" events kept the focus on Iraq.

That said, the point of the DNC Chair isn't to win the next presidential election on his/her own. Rather, it's to build the machinery, mobilize the troops, and make a compelling argument on the Sunday shows.

In a leaderless environment, that's even more important.

"Here's the example that proves the point: George H.W. Bush. He was RNC Chair from 1973-74. Just a few years later in 1980, he ran for President (the first chance after Ford left)."

Huh?

In chronological order in the 1970s HW was ambassador to the UN for a couple of years, then RNC chair for a year or two, then defacto ambassador to China for a couple more years, then head of the CIA for four years. At that point (SIX years after being head of the RNC) he ran for President and could not secure the nomination so he agreed to join the Republican ticket as VP.

Every one of those other jobs was more high profile to the general public than head of the RNC and even with all that he did not manage to get his party's nomination to run for President.

As an argument that being head of the DNC is the best way to keep Edwards in the public eye for a Presidential run in 2008, that example is a non-starter.

I agree with b!X that Clinton is not likely to want the job, I just think he's the best example of someone who could succeed at it. The qualities required have little to do with whether or not the person is a DLC Democrat or a Deaniac or ....

I want a very smart strategist and a capable fund-raiser. Clinton's the only prominent Democrat who is proven at both at that level. Dean and Edwards have had their moments, but they both had opportunities to outmaneuver the guy who just lost to Bush and they both failed.

Don't even think about whining about who did or didn't get behind them yadda yadda yadda. It's the real world this person has to operate in not a nice level playing field. We need someone who can come into the game at quarterback down by two touchdowns with half the first string injured on the bench and the crowd booing loudly and still win the game.

I'm far from confident that Dean or Edwards can handle that even though I find much to like about both of them. If the plan is for Edwards to be the 2008 nominee then I think he would be a bad choice. Get someone else in there that he can work with, he needs to focus on preparing to be a candidate. 2008 is only four years away.

I want a very smart strategist and a capable fund-raiser. Clinton's the only prominent Democrat who is proven at both at that level. Dean and Edwards have had their moments, but they both had opportunities to outmaneuver the guy who just lost to Bush and they both failed.

As I argued before, you can't compare running a primary campaign to heading the DNC. They are very different tasks. But even if you want to compare apples and oranges, my point is that we can't think in terms of "we need a capable fund-raiser" -- at least not in the ways the term is normally used.

Dean and his campaign staff (some of who he likely would have to convince to join him at the DNC for this whole idea to work) demonstrated a rather voraciously successful talent for grassroots fund-raising, which is precisely one of the elements of the grassroots/distributed/networked methodology that Dean would need to bring to the DNC.

So I don't see the fund-raiser question as anything other than a non-starter, to borrow a phrase.

Clinton's a good choice; Dean's better.

Clinton has been to the mountaintop, and despite the ongoing Republican smear campaign against him his entire second term, succeeded brilliantly. The canard about his zipper is just what it is - nothing "undid" Clinton but Scaife, Starr, the criminal Tripp and a Republican Congress.

Anyway, he's unlikely to want such a pedestrian job, and even if he did, he started the DLC. They wouldn't go away anytime soon, and we desperately need them to.

Dean's the guy, and frankly, I'd have no problem with him taking another shot at the Presidency from there.

The rank and file of the Democratic Party is so long past being spoonfed its message from on high - talking points are for pussies. It's better if we follow the Dean model and craft the message together; that way, it's authentic and sincere.

The problem with the Dean approach is at State and County leadership level; most of those people fought for the right to lead the rest of us around by the nose, and they won't be giving it back without a fight, either.

Well, my own ignoring of that question was more a delay of getting into it than forgetting it was asked, because I for one don't know the answer at the moment.

To clarify my position a bit--when I was talking grassroots, I meant the liberal movement as a whole. In the short term, leadership is absolutely critical, and I don't disagree with the majority of what you've written. (My comments on the importance of grassroots are here.)

I think Dean would be perfect, for two reasons. You've identified the first--he knows the base. He fired up true blue Dems like no one in decades (including Clinton, who's moderatism alienated vast swaths of the liberal continuum).

But more importantly, Dean gets the most important fact about the future of the party: it's in rural America. He was eviscerated for his comment about the guy in the truck with a confederate flag on his bumper, but he was right on the mark. As a politician, he couldn't credibly deliver that message (his rural language was appropriate for rural Vermonters, but not Arkansans or Utahns). Further thoughts on the importance of rural America's place in the Democratic Party are at a post at the American Street.

But he wouldn't be running for office--he'd be the cheerleader and guide. He's one of the view Democrats with a pure vision of where the party needs to go. You're right on the money.

BUT, if you look at Opensecrets.org, there are interesting patterns to Dean's fundraising. He raised virtually no money from labor unions. He raised virtually no money from African American.

In a primary campaign, competing against other candidates, each of whom was receiving the attention of different blocs of Democratic voters. That's to be expected.

Once again, I have to remind people that you can't directly compare the specifics of who followed Dean during his primary campaign with what his task would be as chair of the DNC. The primary was a competition amongst several candidates for the support from Democratic voting blocs and funding blocs. Heading the DNC simply is not the same thing.

Any candidate from the primary, during the primary, was resonating only to certain blocs and not to others. That's how primaries work. To take one of the other suggestions, you could look at Edwards' primary campaign and also be able to say that his primary campaign shows he didn't appeal to bloc X or bloc Y. But it wouldn't be proof of anything else, because being a primary candidate and chairing the DNC are two different things.

Coming to you once the DNS propagates (the domain was only just registered a few hours ago): the Give Dr. Dean The DNC petition campaign.

b!x, I agree with all you've said but this: you've never laid out what the job of running the DNC is. You've just asserted that we can't infer anything from his primary struggles--and I still disagree with that claim.

Actually, I did lay that out, somewhere. Not that I can find it now. But it's fairly straightforward: The DNC chair manages, expands, and if necessary helps rally the party membership. Here's what the DNC itself says about what it does:

The Democratic National Committee plans the Party's quadrennial presidential nominating convention; promotes the election of Party candidates with both technical and financial support; and works with national, state, and local party organizations, elected officials, candidates, and constituencies to respond to the needs and views of the Democratic electorate and the nation.

I don't believe that the grassroots excitement generated by Dean's candidate for the presidency will translate into Dean as party chair. As you are fond of pointing out, they are two fundamentally different animals.

In part, my response to this is something I wrote earlier today. It's a just slightly too long to bother recounting in full here.

There's now an AP story... Here's a key quote that opens with former DNC chair, and Dean campaign chair Steve Grossman:

"I strongly urged (Dean) to seek the position," [Grossman] said. "Howard is a voice of political empowerment and that to me is important, for the Democrats to get their sea legs back as quickly as possible, to get beyond the disappointment of the last week and to believe there is a bright future ahead for the Democratic Party." ... Grossman said that if Dean were to run for DNC chair, he would need to pledge that he would serve the full four-year term, thus ruling out a presidential bid in 2008.