Howard Dean A Failure...... as a boogeyman!
I thought I would point out this post at the Daily Kos commemorating the one-year anniversary of Howard Dean's election to chairman of the DNC.
We're now at the rough one-year anniversary of the DNC chairmanship battle, in which us netroots hooligans helped propel Dean to the top of the DNC. We outmaneuvered Kerry, who wanted to install Vilsack and then Sheehan by fiat. We outmaneuvered Reid and Pelosi, who wanted Tim Roemer. We outmaneuvered Mark Brewer of the Association of Democratic State Chairs, who wanted Donnie Fowler. (Here's Ryan Lizza's take on the whole affair.)
This was the first tangible "victory" for the netroots in its struggle for supremacy of the Democratic Party. But I don't bring this up to gloat. Rather, I bring it up to point out how little of the Dean Doomsday Scenario actually played out.
More specifically, the notion that Dean would be a boon to Republican propaganda efforts has completely fallen flat. Remember those? Dem insiders were quaking in their shoes, Republicans were salivating at the chance to remind America how far-left and craaazzzyy those Democrats were with Dean at the top....
While the true measure of Dean's success will be the 2008 elections (rebuilding the party takes time, regardless whether we make gains in 2006 or not), the early praise from his fiercest Democratic detractors and the unilateral ceasefire from the Republican side proves that he's not the Scary Liberal Boogeyman many feared he'd be.
Read the rest of the post for a rather funny set of press releases put out by the Virginia GOP set out to associate "now governor-elect" Tim Kaine with the "boogeyman" Howard Dean.
(I hope I didn't ruin too many lunches with my post title....
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