This entry was posted on 10/1/2006 12:17 PM and is filed under All Posts.
Today's New York Times Magazine piece on Howard Dean's management of the Democratic National Committee is required reading. It's long, but essential to understanding the concept behind Dean's 50-state strategy, as well as the decline of the Democratic Party over the last 40 years. The essence:
Now that Dean has wrested control of the national party, his real agenda, it seems, is to radically reduce its relevance, in the same way that Grover Norquist and his crowd of conservative activists talk about “starving the beast” of the federal government they now control. Once you understand that, it’s easy to understand why Dean isn’t troubled by having less cash in the bank than people think he should, and why he isn’t concerned about quantifying the success of the state parties he’s financing. In Dean’s mind, every dollar that goes to Alaska or Mississippi, or even to the Virgin Islands, even if it isn’t perfectly utilized, is a dollar that isn’t going into the pockets of the Washington syndicate of admen and pollsters who seem to profit more from each election cycle. And that is an end in itself. By shipping the party’s money out of Washington as fast as he can collect it, Dean is trying to finish what he started three years ago — namely, the slow dismantling of the Democratic establishment.
