Dean's back -- political play of the week
The Republicans are supposedly thanking their stars that the new DNC head is Howard Dean who the media -- and they -- claimed to self-destruct because of that so-called scream. If you've actually watched that whole end of his now-famous speech, the craziness was very much exaggerated.
The real problem he had was that his campaign didn't take into account a scenario where he didn't win initially and would have to keep fighting as the underdog while the money started to shift to the frontrunner. Dean was smart in taking his Internet fundraising network and activists, and creating Democracy for America that "brought resources to grassroots Democratic campaigns all over the country." According to this CNN story:
"If we can't elect people running for the city council and country commissioner and school board and state assembly, if we can't elect those people, then we're never gonna elect a president of the United States," Dean said.
Dean put together liberals, who have not been so totally shut out of power since the 1920s, and local Democratic activists, who feel disempowered by the DNC.
A coalition of the disempowered has powered the Dean comeback -- and helped him win the political Play of the Week.
The Dean takeover is a lot like the takeover of the Republican Party by conservative activists in the 1960s. Conservatives felt disempowered after 30 years in the wilderness.
In the short run, the Goldwater takeover looked like a disaster for the GOP. But in the long run, well, look at what happened.