If you haven’t seen it, Noam Scheiber’s piece on [tag]Howard Dean[/tag] in the upcoming issue of The New Republic is worth reading, if for no other reason than to appreciate the internal struggle that seems to be playing out at the DNC’s headquarters.
I know a lot of key bloggers that I like are panning the piece, and I’ll concede that Scheiber’s concerns about Dean’s “persistent messianism” are overwrought, but the article strikes me as helpful in characterizing Dean’s Big Gamble. The [tag]DNC[/tag] has never had a chairman like [tag]Dean[/tag]; the party’s not sure what to do with the guy; and we just don’t know right now whether Dean’s controversial strategy is the brilliant tack of a visionary or the foolish mistake of an amateur. Scheiber seems to suggest it’s the latter, but I think the jury’s still out, at least until after an Election Day.
The bottom line seems to be, well, the bottom line.
Little surprise, then, that Dean’s fund-raising take proved disappointing in 2005. True, the DNC’s $56 million was $12 million more than the party had raised during the last nonelection year. But McAuliffe didn’t build the party’s massive donor list until 2004. The more useful measure is the relative drop-off among the two parties from 2004 to 2005. The RNC fell off by about $180 million; the DNC dropped nearly $300 million.
This is hardly reassuring, but time will tell. Dean’s fundraising — which deemphasizes major donors for the first time in DNC history — has been pretty solid for an off-year cycle in which the party control nothing. Just as importantly, as we’ve talked about before, Dean is making investments in state parties that could pay dividends for years. From Scheiber:
Consider a state like Texas. In 2004, the political birthplace of George W. Bush became a majority minority state. But, because the Texas Democratic Party was basically defunct — it didn’t boast a single full-time staffer — Democrats had next to no ability to reach out to the local black and Latino population. Since 2005, however, the DNC has hired three permanent staffers in Texas, who have in turn recruited dozens of local volunteers. The state is unlikely to swing Democratic in 2008. But there’s no reason it couldn’t do so by 2020.
But what about 2006 and 2008?
Dean is looking ahead, building a national party that can compete anywhere. Dean’s critics are looking at the landscape, watching Republicans flail and fail, and wondering whether the party is in a strong enough position to capitalize right now.
Once every four to six weeks, Dean sits down somewhere on Capitol Hill with the two most powerful Democrats in Washington, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. One topic of conversation comes up regularly: the DNC’s spending priorities. Reid and Pelosi believe the party may be poised to win back Congress after over a decade in the wilderness. They want Dean to pony up for the cause. Dean’s response to their invitation is invariably the same, according to a senior Democratic congressional staffer who has attended the meetings. “He’ll say, ‘I hear you. But that’s the problem with Democrats. We have to think big.'”
I don’t mean to sound wishy-washy, but aren’t they both right? If Dems win in the short term, we can beat back a radical agenda and lay the groundwork for future policy and political gains. If Dems focus on the long term, we can be a majority party for a generation.
Chris Korge, the “granddaddy” of Florida’s big donors, said, “You can’t sacrifice ’08 for the benefit of 20 years from now. The country just cannot afford it.”
That’s persuasive, but I’m just not convinced that Dean’s strategy will be a short-term flop. From the outset, Dean has emphasized infrastructure and personnel, and states that didn’t have resources because they weren’t considered competitive enough have them now. Those folks will be on the ground, working hard, this cycle and the next.
Will we start to see the results of the strategy over the next two years? Stay tuned, but I’m cautiously optimistic.