{"id":9030,"date":"2006-11-10T14:04:24","date_gmt":"2006-11-10T19:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9030.html"},"modified":"2006-11-10T14:04:24","modified_gmt":"2006-11-10T19:04:24","slug":"deans-reward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/deans-reward\/","title":{"rendered":"Dean’s reward"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howard Dean made some risky moves over the last two years, but after the election results were in, he looked pretty smart. As Joe Conason noted<\/a> in Salon today, the DNC chairman is “enjoying vindication.”<\/p>\n

As well he should. Though I’ve been hard on Dean on occasion, his strategy helped the party in the short term, and has positioned the party well for the long term. I can appreciate the fact that there’s some kind of mortal struggle to the death to determine who, exactly, deserves the credit for Dems’ success this week, but at an absolute minimum, Dean deserves a pat on the back for a job well done.<\/p>\n

What he does not deserve is a pink slip<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the 50-state strategy and his stinginess with funds for House races cost the Democrats several pickup opportunities.<\/p>\n

The candidate being floated to replace Dean? Harold Ford.<\/p>\n

Says James Carville, one of the anti-Deaniacs, “Suppose Harold Ford became chairman of the DNC? How much more money do you think we could raise? Just think of the difference it could make in one day. Now probably Harold Ford wants to stay in Tennessee. I just appointed myself his campaign manager.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I’m not reflexively anti-Ford, but we’re talking about a congressman who ran to the far-right on social issues, voted for torture, and blew a lead to lose a closely-watched Senate race. He’s a talented pol, and I hope he stays around, but DNC chair? Ousting the current chair after a wildly successful cycle?<\/p>\n

I’m not one for instinctively bashing the establishment, but this kind of anti-Dean talk just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Howard Dean made some risky moves over the last two years, but after the election results were in, he looked pretty smart. As Joe Conason noted in Salon today, the DNC chairman is “enjoying vindication.” As well he should. Though I’ve been hard on Dean on occasion, his strategy helped the party in the short […]<\/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-9030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9030","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=9030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}