A lot actually, Howard Dean represents the most serious threat to elite politics since at least the 1960s.   During Governor Dean's tenure as DNC chair, the Democrats won two back-to-back "wave elections" --- which has never happened before in American history --- and America's first multi-racial President was elected in a landslide.  Yet, for the last five years Governor Dean has been a lightening rod for criticism among both the "serious" people in the media and the "serious" people in his own party.  

So why doesn't the establishment like Howard Dean?  It's simple really; Howard Dean represents a significant threat to 21st century elite politics.  

Dean's family made their fortune as old school brokerage owners and executives. Dean grew up in East Hampton on Long Island and on Park Avenue.  Yet he turned his back on a financial career, went to medical school and became a family doctor in Vermont along with his wife Judith Steinberg.  He's the Park Avenue version of the hippy who went up country.  Yet his life and his career flourished.  He was elected to the Vermont legislature after getting involved in local politics as part of a coalition looking to get a bike path built along Lake Champlain.  He was elected Lt. Governor in 1986 and reelected Governor 5 times (becoming the second longest serving Vermont Governor in Vermont history) after stepping into the role after the death of Governor Richard Snelling.  He created the first mass political movement using Internet technologies.  And he transformed party politics by transferring power to the state and local parties.

In a thirty-year period dominated by an insane reverse wealth transfer, and in which the excesses of the financial elite threaten to crater the capitalist system without massive risk socialization by the federal government, Dean has stood out at as a critic of D.C. centered politics and elite domination of the federal government.   Think about it; a person who began their career in politics fighting to get a bike path built is at the gates of the highest levels of government.  A presidential candidate who stuffs his suit pockets with chocolate chip cookies, a guy who directs his staffer to go left rather than right at a house party so he can get another shot at the M&M bowl.  A real person, a small d democrat, who viscerally understands the American elite because he was once part of it, rises to national leadership and pushes power back into the grassroots and the state parties.

The personal threat that Dean poses to elite rule is compounded by his rise through Vermont politics.  Vermont doesn't just talk about bipartisanship and use it as a cover for sample sales of the country's assets by elite politicians and financiers; they practice it in their electoral politics.  In the last twenty years Vermonters have elected a classic Yankee Republican (Jim Jeffords), a scrappy Brooklyn born socialist (Bernie Sanders) and a scion of Park Avenue wealth turned family doctor (Howard Dean) as their statewide representatives.  

These new Green Mountain Boys have a people and community orientation that comes out of Vermont's tradition of direct democracy through the town meeting.  Howard Dean's fifty state strategy is in essence an extension of the practice of direct democracy to party politics and electoral organizing.   And it scares the hell out of the D.C. regulars and the corporate elites.   It takes us beyond the culture of the expert --- the serious foreign policy expert from the northeast corridor, the Yale graduate organizing on behalf of janitors, Wall Street bankers trying to fix a system they broke --- to organizations and coalitions of ordinary people choosing leaders and solving problems on their own.   It harnesses the new communication technologies to spread power and enable real conversations between those on the ground and those back in a state capital, D.C., or elsewhere.  

For the D.C. and corporate elites, this model of direct democratic movement politics is very dangerous indeed.

David Sirota had a very penetrating insight into the marginalization of progressives in matters of economic and foreign policy during the Obama transition:

What I mean to say is that we live in a culture that now organizes around celebrity - and Obama knew it, and knew that lots of left organizations aren't really ideological - they are, if anything, organized around the Democratic Party and Bush hatred. So he basically figured out that if he could become a celebrity - and a Democratic Bush-hating one - he could swallow up a huge part of the "progressive infrastructure" and organize it around him (and all the hateful "if you question Obama, you hate Obama" comments that will inevitably be at the bottom of this diary actually confirm this!). And we shouldn't blame him for being a "celebrity" - it's not an epithet. And we shouldn't blame him for seizing his moment. Not at all.

This, by the way, is very different from the Reagan model. Reagan was a telegenic, for sure - but he was a product of a movement. In the age of celebrity worship - the age where we literally organize AROUND celebrity - Obama is a movement unto himself.

Obama Ate the Left

This continues to be a problem for progressive politics in the United States.  We continue to lack a real movement or institutional structure.  Unfortunately in many communities, progressive politics and institutions stand outside the fabric of everyday life.  There are exceptions of course, but it is rare to find in suburban, exurban and rural communities organizations or institutions that can easily serve as a rallying point for progressive candidates, politics and ideas.

Howard Dean actually addressed this issue by transferring power and budgets to the state and local parties.  The end result was back-to-back wave elections, wins in unexpected places like Mississippi and the revitalization of some state parties.    

The famous question "What do we do now" is taking on an increasing urgency for progressives as folks like Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers are appointed to Treasury and to Senior White House posts and the architects of the democratic resurgence are cast into the wilderness.   If the auto industry is allowed to collapse after this last Citigroup bailout, this Democratic resurgence architected by Howard Dean will be quite short lived.

The challenge over the next 12-18 months is to build new networks of state and local power that don't rely on the Democratic National Committee or other D.C. based institutions.  Howard Dean showed us the way and used the DNC to further state and local politics.  We now need to take his model and build independent institutions and funding sources that forward the vision of direct democracy.

The establishment hates Howard Dean.  We can turn the tables by showing them that we do indeed have the power.

Cross posted at OpenLeft

District	Partisan Index(Cook)	Friday House Line (Chris Cillizza)	2006 Congressional	2004 Presidential
MN-03	R+1	12	64.85% [R]35.04% [D]	Kerry [48.05%] Bush [50.95%]
NJ-07	R+1	9	49.42% [R] 47.22% [D]	Kerry [46.9%] Bush [53.01%]
WA-08	D+2	19	51.46% [R] 48.54% [D]	Kerry [50.63%] Bush [48.02%]

What do these three districts have in common? All three are currently represented by Republicans and have solid pockets of high information voters, creative class professionals and symbolic analysts. They are suburban in nature and boast a healthy dose of diversity be it geographic, economic, ethnic or racial. Obama should do quite well in these districts and has already scored impressive caucus victories in both Minnesota and Washington State.

These districts and their congressional representatives also hold the key to a progressive governing coalition in an Obama administration. Much as southern democrats and Bush Dogs have held the key to democratic legislation and progressive progress over the last generation, suburban congressional democrats will exert crucial influence in energy policy, transportation, immigration, healthcare, telecommunications and technology policy over the next decade.

Over the next several weeks we will explore these districts and their candidates. We’ll examine current polling data where it exists, look at current patterns of representation and the strengths and weaknesses of the democratic challengers in each district (MN-03 and NJ-07 are open seats due to retirements by republican congressman).

A must read from a recovering journalist.  This is a priceless confession about the run up to the war:

It hit me hard and I knew why. I remembered the story that resulted from that last appointment. I was assigned to write the foreign policy story for the "issues" series that the Strib ran as part of its Wellstone-vs.-Norm-Coleman campaign coverage.

It was the fall of 2002, so the biggest foreign policy issue was the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. Wellstone opposed it, Coleman favored it.

An issue story on the eve of an election is a highly scrutinized exercise in this kind of "balance." By the time I wrote that 2002 foreign policy issue piece, I had come to doubt the value of such pieces, especially during the run-up to the Iraq war, when the "balanced frame" method seemed to be almost disinforming the electorate. But I did my job as I then understood it, giving no hint of my own strong conviction that the doctrine of pre-emptive unilateral war based on an unproven, non-imminent threat and without the legitimization of U.N. would be a huge mistake and national disgrace.

The rest is here. It's a good read and shows how much Wellstone impacted peoples lives.

Paul Wellstone Spoke to Me From the Grave

Another gem from the Financial Times.  Americans visiting Rome were shocked, shocked they tell at us at the level of vitriol directed at the President's visit to Italy.

A family from Tennessee tells the tale:

For the Cooper family, from Knoxville, Tennessee, visiting Rome was supposed to be the highlight to their two-week vacation in Europe.

Instead, they arrived on Saturday to find some of the Eternal City's most famous streets and piazzas packed with tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators protesting against a visit by President George W. Bush on his way home from a G8 summit.

"We come from a place where you just don't see this kind of street protest," said John Cooper, watching with his wife and two teenage children as demonstrators passed nearby waving communist flags, chanting "Yankee Go Home" and brandishing banners that compared Mr Bush to Hitler.

As Mr Cooper spoke, a skirmish erupted between protesters and riot police, sending the family fleeing for safety down a side street. The violence flared for the next two hours, finally quelled by thousands of baton-wielding police and several bursts of tear gas.

and of course the corporatists are in charge preventing a true accounting of the war:

Avoiding the issue has become easier since Europe's two most strident war critics - Gerhard Schröder, former German chancellor, and Jacques Chirac, former French president - have been replaced by Ms Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, who are more Atlanticist in outlook.

But while Europe's leaders may have decided to look beyond the war, Saturday's protests showed that many ordinary Europeans, particularly the young and left-leaning, still view the US through the prism of Iraq.

Most U.S. tourists felt the protests were aimed at Il Presidente rather than the U.S. But young Ms. Cooper was in a bit of a tiff about the Anti-American rabble on the street:

But Mr Cooper's daughter, Sarah, admitted feeling resentful. "It's tough to take when you see people being so disrespectful of our president," she said.

Me, I'm learning the words to O'Canada for my next trip abroad.

The full article (firewalled) is here: We don't take kindly to yer type around here

For a further view of how Skeeter, I mean Mr. Cooper, and his family can't see beyond the daily talking points from Fox and the Vice President's sockpuppet, or as he likes to be known, Senator Lieberman, I refer you to NLinStPaul's excellent diary:

Facing the fear: a journey out of authoritarianism

No, really, it's on the splash page of the Wall Street Journal.  Subscription required.

This is huge.  

What unites us here today is our shared belief that it will be a far greater America when we get affordable health care for all Americans," said Mr. Stern, who has been one of Wal-Mart's staunchest critics but also publicly invited CEOs to work with him on the health-care problem. "This is not just a moral problem but a major drag on American business competitiveness and job creation."

Mr. Scott said, "We put aside disagreements to drive this debate forward."

AT&T, Intel, and The Communications Workers of America also joined in.

This is clearly a case where effective progressive and democratic electoral work is driving real change.  Almost all major social justice initiatives in the U.S. have only come to fruition when pushed against the wall by organized, outspoken progressives working both inside and outside of establishment organizations like the democratic party and the labor unions.

It's no coincidence that Wal Mart's announcement comes on the heels of a string of disappointing same store sales results over the last several months: Wal Mart sees soft same store sales results>.

It all matters, Madman's rants against the donklephants (love that term btw Madman), AG's penetrating insights into the underbelly of our socioeconomic model, Real History Lisa's fact based review of seminal events in our recent past, Supersoling's peace activism and Green progressivism, Booman's willingness to push "big blog" discourse, the electoral activism of MYDD and Kos. Envelope pushers like MSOC, BostonJoe and OPOL. The work and community building everyone here does every single day.

But we have still have a lot of work to do, and we must be ever vigilant.  Now if we can just get a Fortune 500 CEO to speak against the war in Iraq and against escalation with Iran.

My son turned 18 last Friday.  But I really can't argue against or oppose this legislation.

I grew up in a mixed race working class town where almost every adult male over the age of about 35 served and a stint in the military was considered by almost every kid.  For some it was the only way out.

I remember this guy Mike who was a few years older than us joining the Marines.  He grew up in a very dysfunctional family and all he ever wanted to do was be a Marine. He joined right out of HS.  A couple of years later, he was married to his HS girlfriend, had a nice car and totally had his shit together.  I wanted to be like Mike but went to college instead.

My son has grown up in an affluent suburban town.  He's attended one of the best high schools in the country. The military is the last thing on his mind. He's very bright, articulate and interested in history and cultures. He leans a little left but isn't left-liberal like me or crazy radical like some of the kids at our church. He's very nuanced in his thoughts and beliefs. He's probably going to study Arabic or Farsi in college next year.  Thinking about a quick stint in the Army Reserves as a way to prep him for a career in the state or commerce departments or even in business or academia is the last thing on his mind.

Nor I would I want to see him in today's military.  And I would sell everything I own in order to keep him out of ground combat in the Middle East.  But I can't argue against the draft.  I can't ask my reps to vote against it.  In fact I wouldn't mind seeing the draft reinstated.  I think we've gone too far in asking others to do what we wouldn't do ourselves.

I've suggested to him that he might want to consider serving as an Air Force officer or joining the Coast Guard or Coast Guard Reserve, but I don't think he's listening or is even aware of what advantages he has. We live on "the other side" of the main N/S highway in town.  When I worked in corporate America I was in the top 20% of income earners nationwide, but in this town we were roughly in the bottom half.  And we've struggled financially since the divorce and I'm more strict about the budget now.  I don't think he considers us affluent.

I don't know.  I just don't know.

I think Charley Rangel's on the money with this one.

Rangel Introduces the Draft

Rangel Statement from November on draft equity

I started this as a comment to Booman's post last Friday on Obama and that Generational Thang but it quickly grew so I thought I'd turn it into a diary.   I'm close in age to Booman, though I'm actually a couple of years older than Booman. I graduated High School in 1984, he graduated in 1987.  I found that much of what he had to say really resonated with me.  

I grew up in a multi-racial working-class town in the Northeast. I find that I personally relate a lot more to John Edwards than to Barack Obama even though John's a southerner and a boomer and I'm a Gen Xer from the north. I do agree with Booman that the frame The Creative Class leaves out much of the democratic constituency.  While it's a beautiful construct and does a great deal to explain regional competitive advantage and generational dynamics, as a political strategy I think it's a path straight back to the angry white man politics of the Reagan era which reached their zenith under Bush II.  And that's quite possibly the crux of the problem.  Does an Obama candidacy ignore the realities of class, work, and professional stratification in the U.S?  Or does Obama represent a path to the future?

at 1:20PM CST.  You can listen here:  Thom Hartmann

The show will be broadcast locally in the Twin Cities area at 6PM on 950AM.

Here's a quick update since we haven't posted in a while:

Wendy Wilde will be the first Democratic challenger in Minnesota's 3rd Congressional District to do TV ads in almost twenty years!

But we need your help!  A local supporter has pledged $250 for the first round of cable buys if people will match them.

I'd like to quadruple their pledge and accelerate the momentum we've been building over the past few weeks.  I want to raise $1000 by Friday at 12 Noon.  All money raised will go to put Wendy on cable TV.  So make sure you mark donations with  .01 cents so we can track them.

You can donate here:  Mom's Cookie Jar

Or

At Act Blue

See our You Tube Video here: Had Enough?

Read the Star Tribune's Profile on Wendy that was Published Today

Update: Minnesota Campaign Report's Interview with Wendy

Wendy Wilde says Hastert lacks the moral leadership to serve as Speaker and asks him to resign from Congress. She had this to say:

The House leadership failed the public, failed teenagers under their supervision, betrayed the trust of American parents, and allowed their colleague to continue harmful behavior under their watch.  They need to step down immediately."

Full press release below the fold.

Wendy Wilde held a press conference at Congressman Jim Ramstad's office today to ask him sign a bi-partisan pledge to restore parents confidence in the U.S. Congress.  Wendy had this to say:

As a mother, youth-issues activist, and voting citizen, I join other Minnesotans in being outraged by the pattern of deceit, denial and cover-up by the House Leadership.  This pledge focused on restoring parent's confidence in the U.S. Congress. I am asking Congressman Jim Ramstad to join with me as one of the first signers.  We are requesting that ALL members of congress and congressional candidates sign this pledge.

For those who may be coming to terms with sexual abuse issues or who may have been "triggered" by the Foley Scandal there are support organizations in place.  You can start with the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

I'm a survivor of clergy abuse.  Though sometimes it seems really dark and you don't know how you'll get through the day, there is light at the end of the tunnel.  Bruce Springsteen's music and a lot of really good people taught me that.

Update:  If you're a family member, loved-one, or close friend of a survivor there is support for you too. Supporters are always welcome at SNAP.

We're live on the radio this morning with our first flight of ads in the Twin Cities.  They're playing on WCCO from Tuesday to Saturday from 5AM - 9AM and on Air America.

You can watch the You Tube video of our jingle on You Tube here: Had Enough?.

Special thanks to Mike McIntee, The Squirrel Nut Zippers and Ricky Lee Jones.  This is the first of what will be an extended push over the next five weeks. Stay tuned for more!

Elect Mom

Thank you!

From Betsy O'Berry, Wendy's campaign manager:

Thank you all for your help! As of midnight, September 30, we had
raised $50,723 to date for the campaign! The PayPal deposits from the
website put us over the top.

Thanks to all of you for helping us raise more money than any campaign
for Congress in the 3rd CD in the last 12 years. We could not have
done it without you.

Just a note - we are not done. Every dollar we raise from here on out
goes to pay for more radio ads, more literature, more lawnsigns and
more voter contact to help Wendy win. Brian Kujawa has put together a
dynamite fundraiser for us on October 15 - we could still use your
help!

Thanks again!

Betsy O'Berry

Wendy is the first candidate to break the $50K fundraising barrier in MN-03 in over 10 years.  We are facing a 16 year incumbent widely perceived as a moderate even though he voted 82% of the time with George Bush.

Elect Mom