Democrats Finally Putting Together a Decent PR Campaign

Although I think they waited a good six months too long. Better late than never. Read on.

Obama Campaign: Howard Dean to Remain as DNC Chair

From DailyKos:

As Obama moves to unify the Democratic Party, he is sending his strategist Paul Tewes to join the DNC. But Howard Dean will remain. Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton:

"Senator Obama appreciates the hard work that Chairman Dean has done to grow our party at the grassroots level and looks forward to working with him as the chairman of the Democratic Party as we go forward."

I know we've had our testy moments with Dean, but I'm a fan of the 50 State Strategy, and I see no reason to remove Dean right now.

DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting

Well, today is the day. The meeting of the Rules and Bylaws Committe about settling Florida and Michigan. I know that it's being shown on C-Span and MSNBC. So, if you're watching it, talk about it in here.

UPDATE: According to CNN.com, here's what happened today:

Florida, Michigan get all delegates, but each gets half vote

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After a day of wrangling in front of a sometimes unruly crowd, the Democratic National Committee's rules and bylaws committee reinstated all of Florida and Michigan's delegates to its party convention, with each getting a half-vote to penalize the states for moving their primaries earlier than the party had approved.

The move will leave front-runner Sen. Barack Obama's lead over rival Sen. Hillary Clinton intact.

"This results in Sen. Clinton obtaining a substantial number of additional pledged delegates, but I also understand that many members of the Florida and Michigan delegations feel satisfied that the decision was fair," Obama said after a campaign event in Aberdeen, South Dakota. "Our main goal is to get this resolved so we can immediately turn the focus of the entire party on winning Florida and Michigan and delivering on the needs of the people in Florida and Michigan -- states that are enormously important, states where a lot of people are struggling."

The Florida decision, which follows the pro-Clinton results of that state's primary, was greeted by virtually all sides as an acceptable compromise on a thorny issue. But Clinton backers vowed to fight the Michigan decision, which gave the New York senator a 10-delegate edge over Obama in a state where his name didn't appear on the primary ballot.

"Today's results are a victory for the people of Florida, who will have a voice in selecting our party's nominee and will see its delegates seated at our party's convention," said a joint-statement from Clinton advisers Harold Ickes and Tina Flournoy. "[But] we strongly object to the committee's decision to undercut its own rules in seating Michigan's delegates without reflecting the votes of the people of Michigan."

With no Michigan or Florida delegates included, Obama led Clinton by 202 delegates.

The committee's ruling gave Clinton 105 pledged delegates from Florida and 69 from Michigan, with a total of 87 votes.

Obama received 67 pledged delegates from Florida and 59 from Michigan, casting a total of 63 votes.

That tally leaves Obama ahead by the equivalent of 178 delegates.

If each delegate had been granted a full vote, Clinton still would have trailed Obama.

Rest of story at link.

According to DailyKos,

The Magic Number is now 2117.

Obama has 2053.
Clinton has 1876.5.

Obama's Number to clinch the nomination is now 64.

The Attacks on Howard Dean

hat tip: The Field

From the NYTimes.com:

Democrats’ Turmoil Tests Party’s Low-Key Leader
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: April 2, 2008

WASHINGTON — The turmoil in the Democratic presidential race has presented a sharp test of Howard Dean’s low-profile approach to leading the Democratic National Committee, bringing calls from many Democrats for him to take a more aggressive role in defusing the threat of a protracted and divisive nominating fight.

After months in which he was largely absent from public deliberations about how to avert a risk to the party’s hopes of taking the White House in November, Mr. Dean stepped forward last week to say he wanted the contest resolved by July 1 and for Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to tone down their attacks on each other.

Yet three years after he won election as the party chairman by running largely as an outsider, it is not clear that Mr. Dean has the political skills or the stature with the two campaigns to bring the nominating battle to a relatively quick and unifying conclusion.

Indeed, 24 hours after he made his remarks, Mrs. Clinton said she intended to keep fighting for the nomination through the summer, if necessary. It was an unmistakable rebuke to Mr. Dean, who has never had good relations with the Clintons.

In an interview, Mr. Dean said he was taking steps to pave the way to a smooth convention in Denver this summer, suggesting that he had had private conversations with both campaigns.

Mr. Dean and his aides said they were assembling resources — voter lists, political organizations and polling on vulnerabilities of Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. Beyond that, Mr. Dean and other Democrats argued that with the party so divided — and in the midst of a fight between two outsized political figures — there were limits to what he could, or should, do.

“I’m making calls all the time to people,” he said. “I’ve spoken to a great number of leaders who are not aligned. The operative thing here is let the voters get to have their say before the Washington politicians have their say.”
.......................................

Mr. Dean, a reserved former governor of Vermont, goes home most weekends and spends most of his weekdays on the road. In Washington, he stays at a hotel. His approach and style offer a sharp contrast to a string of big-shoulder, high-profile party chairmen —Terry McAuliffe or the late Ron H. Brown — who rose through the party ranks and were fixtures at the parties, fund-raisers and restaurants that make up this city’s political culture and where much of the political conversation takes place.

He in many ways ran for chairman as a candidate defying the Democratic establishment, and his first years were marked by a very public feud with Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, over Mr. Dean’s trademark proposal to use Democratic National Committee money to build organizations in all 50 states. He does not have particularly close relationships with many of the people who are central to the Clinton and Obama campaigns or Washington Democratic players.

“I have never heard from him,” said Charles T. Manatt, who was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1981 to 1985. “But he is a totally different style from someone like me who came in through the party process. Dean doesn’t live in town so he hasn’t connected with a lot of people in town.”

Rest of article at link above.

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I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Time Magazine was right a couple of months ago when they had Clinton and Obama on the cover and the title was

Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party

They were entirely right. The battle between Clinton and Obama isn't just between two candidates, it's about two entirely opposite and incompatible organizing philosophies.

With the Clintons, you get the 50%+1 strategy. This is a TOP-DOWN way of thinking and organizing, full of big donors, lobbyists, and other political parasites like the Democratic Leadership Council.

With Obama, you get the Dean Originated 50 State Strategy. This is a BOTTOM-UP way of thinking and organizing, full of little people thinking that they could have a say in the way things are run.

The Clintons and their henchmen have been after Dean ever since he ran for DNC Chair. They wanted to stop him then, repeatedly trying to diminish Dean's successes in 2006. The thing is, the Democrats on the ground, who do the grunt work, love Dean, if for no other reason, he actually TALKED to them after years of being ignored by the DNC.

Obama took Dean's 50 State Strategy, studied it, and then filled it in. It's at the root of his success. When Billary didn't have a post-Feb. 5th Strategy, Obama had already organized and had boots on the ground in those post-Feb. 5 States. Obama is winning this because he took every state seriously and organized there. Obama's fundraising success is a shock to the entire political system. Remember, he was laughed at when he said that he wouldn't take Lobbyist or PAC money. Remember, Billary's insistence that she would opt out of public financing was done as a move of INTIMIDATION - because, of course, nobody was supposed to beat the vaunted Clinton fundraising machine. When Obama nearly matched her in that 1st Quarter, the political earthquake was felt, coast to coast. That he has now raised MORE MONEY than anyone in the history of Primary Politics is stunning, and has people just standing there with their mouths agape.

Obama winning the nomination and the Presidency will mean that one strategy will triump over the other, and all of those who had gotten fat and greasy using the 50%+1 Strategy will have to move over.

THAT is what the threatening letter to Pelosi was about.
THAT is what articles like this are about.

They are trying to undermine Howard Dean and move him out. It's all about keeping the Clintons in power. Make no mistake about that.

And that's why, in a way, Obama isn't even about Obama anymore. It's about something bigger. A vision larger than him, about fundamentally, how you want to see politics run.



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