{"id":9002,"date":"2006-11-08T10:57:51","date_gmt":"2006-11-08T15:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9002.html"},"modified":"2006-11-08T10:57:51","modified_gmt":"2006-11-08T15:57:51","slug":"the-50-state-strategy-is-looking-pretty-good-this-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-50-state-strategy-is-looking-pretty-good-this-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"The 50-state strategy is looking pretty good this morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a little disconcerting to see some progressive voices starting to address internal divisions within the Democratic Party. I don’t doubt for a moment that we’ll have some challenging details to work out in terms of agenda, leadership, and direction, but given the results, today is a day to enjoy a job well done.<\/p>\n

And as part of that, I think there are some Dem leaders who deserve some credit. In addition to the leadership on the Hill, let’s not forget Howard Dean took a very big gamble over the last two years, and today he looks pretty smart.<\/p>\n

Dean’s “50-state strategy” was one of the more contentious points in the party of late. The idea was straightforward enough: build up the party over the long-term by investing in infrastructure. With DNC money, state parties received resources and staff that they’d never seen from the national office before, even in, especially<\/i> in<\/a>, states where Dems have fared poorly in recent years.<\/p>\n

The party had made noises about doing this before, but there was never a good time. The next campaign cycle was always immediately more important. The response was always, “Maybe after this cycle.” And as soon as that cycle was done, the party began focusing on the next one.<\/p>\n

Dean decided to take a leap of faith. 2006 was important, but he believed the party could do well enough without significant short-term DNC investments, meaning he could help red-state Dems to build voter lists, organize caucuses, install precinct chairs, buy computers, and hire organizers that could help the party for years to come.<\/p>\n

I wrote a few months ago that, on November 8, Dean would either look like a fool (for blowing a tremendous opportunity to take back Congress) or a genius (for putting a down payment on the future while the party excels in the midterms anyway). I’ve been hard on Dean from time to time, but given the results, I’d say he has every reason to pat himself on the back this morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a little disconcerting to see some progressive voices starting to address internal divisions within the Democratic Party. I don’t doubt for a moment that we’ll have some challenging details to work out in terms of agenda, leadership, and direction, but given the results, today is a day to enjoy a job well done. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}