Howard Dean has a big week in the media, some good news and some bad news

This has been a pretty huge week for former Vermont Governor and presidential candidate Howard Dean. He unveiled a major universal health care plan, he was the subject of intense debate at a conference of the Democratic Leadership Council, and was featured in a major article in the paleo-lib bible, The Nation. Some of the week went really well for the good doctor, but not all of it.

First, the health care debate. Though Dean is now thought of by many national political reporters as the “anti-war” candidate, the truth is Dean, a medical doctor before entering politics, started his campaign as the “health care” candidate. As governor, he expanded insurance access dramatically, most notably among the state’s children, making Vermont one of the best states in the Union on health care.

Slowly, however, the issue got away from him. The war in Iraq dominated headlines and Dean’s opposition to the war made him a darling of the party’s liberal base, a fact the Dean campaign did everything possible to exploit for new support. As the war ended, Dean started high-profile fights with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry over domestic security issues. Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) took advantage and seized the health care spotlight, unveiling his health care plan while Dean and Kerry bickered.

This week, Dean began his effort to take the issue back, unveiling a plan to expand access to health insurance. So far, the reviews of the plan have been almost universally positive. Though the central elements of the proposal — expanding state-controlled insurance plans to cover Americans under 25 and tax incentives for businesses to cover their employees — sound very similar to the idea unveiled by Bill Bradley in 2000, most agreed the proposal is workable, cost-effective, and sound.

The New Republic’s campaign blog gave it an “A” and said it “looks like pretty good stuff.” Slate’s William Saletan lauded Dean for “aggressively reclaiming” the health care issue away from Gephardt.

To be sure, Dean’s plan isn’t perfect. The plan doesn’t even try to address the rising costs of health care treatment, and the Holy Grail of the issue — a plan to cover prescription drug benefits — will be part of a different plan Dean plans to unveil in a few months.

The Democratic Leadership Council, meanwhile, isn’t waiting around to voice its concerns about Dean’s candidacy. To summarize their thoughts, they don’t like him.

For those of you not familiar with the DLC, it’s a Democratic centrist group who works to keep the party in the center. You’ll frequently hear DLC-types talking about “New Democrats” and a “third way” in American politics. Former chairmen of the DLC include Bill Clinton and Al Gore, which translates into significant influence for the group.

So the DLC is surveying the political landscape and thinking out loud about who can beat Bush in ’04. They’ve come to one conclusion: Dean isn’t the guy.

Al From and Bruce Reed, who head the DLC, have written a memo to the group’s membership dismissing Dean as a liberal from the ” McGovern-Mondale wing” of the party — “the wing that lost 49 states in two elections, and transformed Democrats from a strong national party into a much weaker regional one.”

“We are increasingly confident that President Bush can be beaten next year, but Dean is not the man to do it,” Reed and From wrote. “Most Democrats aren’t elitists who think they know better than everyone else.” Pretty strong stuff from pretty important party leaders.

Ironically, for those really familiar with Dean’s record, he’s not the ultra-liberal he’s been made out to be. On fiscal and gun issues, he’s downright conservative. A year ago, Dean was bragging that he can do well in the South because of his “centrist” positions. In Vermont, the far left got so frustrated with his moderation that they created the Progressive Party, which is now undermining Democratic campaigns across the state by splitting the liberal vote.

Yet the DLC thinks he’s to the left of Ted Kennedy.

Whose fault is it that Dean has become symbolic of the “McGovern-Mondale wing” of the party? I’d argue it’s Dean’s fault, or at a minimum, the campaign staffers whose advice he’s been taking. Dean believes he’s got to run left to the win the nomination and then he’ll return to the center for the general election. In principle, that’s a fine philosophy. The trouble is, Dean has intentionally positioned himself so far to the left that he’s alienating centrists and up-for-grabs Independents, not to mention filling RNC oppo files with ammunition in the event he does get the nomination. Dean seems to genuinely believe he’ll be able to make a dramatic run for the middle six months before the general election. The DLC thinks he’s mistaken, and so do I.

Dean is clearly upset that that the DLC wants to bury his campaign, but as far as I’m concerned, he has no one to blame but himself.

Unfortunately for Dean, he’s getting hit from both sides. As the DLC announces he’s too liberal to get elected, Jim Farrell, former spokesman for the late Senator Wellstone and a writer for The Nation, explains that liberals should be hesitant to support Dean because he’s not the progressive champion the left thinks he is.

Farrell explains that “Democratic rank and file yearn for populist leadership based on a firm commitment to progressive policies” and that “Dean’s call for a grassroots campaign to ‘take back America’ sounds progressive.” Farrell even notes that Dean has taken Wellstone’s line about representing the “Democratic Party wing of the Democratic Party.”

“While Dean may share some measure of Wellstone’s passion, his record and his agenda are very different,” Farrell writes. “As governor of Vermont, Dean targeted for elimination the public-financing provision of the state’s campaign finance law — a law similar to the one Wellstone pushed in the Senate. In February, Dean told the Associated Press that his big donors are given special access. And while Wellstone fought for people on welfare, Dean said ‘welfare recipients don’t have any self-esteem. If they did, they’d be working,’ later declaring that ‘liberals like Marian Wright Edelman are wrong.’ And Dean scaled back Vermont’s welfare program, reducing cash benefits and imposing strict time limits on single mothers receiving welfare assistance.”

When a candidate is running for the Dems’ liberal base, but is getting raked over the coals in The Nation, you know there’s a problem.