Chris Cillizza has a post up on his Washington Post blog, "The Fix", that discusses Howard Dean's decline in influence after the election that his strategy helped win. Cillizza notes that Dean stepped down as DNC Chair in the aftermath of Obama's election, in an attempt to consolidate the reins of the Democratic Party in Obama's hands. After that, Dean's focus on health care reform led to an interest in becoming HHS Secretary (a position in which he would have had not only political but practical expertise as a physician), but since that position went to Tom Daschle, Dean is somewhat out in the cold in an Obama administration.
This is sad, and unjust, but possibly not surprising. Dean apparently had a protracted feud with Rahm Emmanuel in the runup to the 2006 elections, when the latter was DCCC chair, over allocation of party resources. Like many establishment Democrats, Emmanuel was apparently not a fan of the fifty-state strategy, but was pretty good at claiming credit for its successes after the fact in 2007. Now that that strategy has also gained the presidency, Obama's relationship with Emmanuel may have locked Dean out of the game in the new administration (one of the reasons some in the blogosphere were wary of the Emmanuel pick).
Obama's choice of Daschle over Dean for HHS and health care field marshal may well be a good one. On the up side, Daschle certainly knows who's who on Capitol Hill, and has a long-standing interest of his own in the matter (including a book which is reported to be an authoritative and detailed report of the policy options). On the down side, Daschle and his wife are both lobbyists, which puts something of a dent in the "new way of governing" mantra that Obama spent so much time on during the campaign. Good or not, though, the Daschle pick leaves Dean without portfolio, and according to Cillizza, Dean's uninterested in "going back to Vermont", and wants to stay involved in public policy on the national level.
That's very good fortune for Democrats, even if Obama hasn't found a place for Dean in his administration. I have a suggestion for Governor Dean, which may not be as immediately productive as a job in the cabinet, but may prove to be more useful to the progressive project in the long run. He should get re-involved in the organization he founded, Democracy For America, which is currently being run by his brother Jim, and he should add another mission to the one it currently serves.
DFA is an interesting group. The product of the grass roots organizing effort of the Dean campaign, it does two things - first, it selects and supports a variety of progressive candidates in both Democratic primary and general election campaigns (and its record ain't bad over the last two cycles). Also, it produces and distributes a series of DVD classes about political organizing, intended to empower local progressives to organize in the same way that the Obama campaign's organizer camps were, but around more policy-based goals than Obama's campaign promoted. And that's the difference that we need Governor Dean to get involved with and build upon. He should add a policy shop to DFA's other two missions, to help the organization serve as a separate power center in support of progressive candidates for offices at all levels, and for a progressive agenda (whether enacted by Obama or not).
For obvious reasons, the Obama campaign was more about promoting Obama than any particular policy agenda per se, and since the election, we have seen a few indicators that some of the agenda items progressives supported Obama for may not be as dear to his heart as we had hoped. We have seen and heard a great deal about Obama's pragmatist bent, but as Chris Hayes points out in his recent Nation piece, we're not entirely sure what that means. The administration hasn’t begun yet, and we should give it the benefit of the doubt, but the choice of Rick Warren to give the convocation at the inauguration has dismayed many progressives, as have Obama’s waffling on the hobbling of the FISA act, the ongoing rhetoric about ethanol subsidy and "clean coal" investments, the repetition of the phrase “roads and bridges” as the centerpiece of any discussion of infrastructure, and a couple of the choices for cabinet and staff posts.
Some of these shortfalls may be concessions to political realities, some may be protective coloring for a more progressive agenda than would be possible without that rhetoric or those people in place, and some or all may be genuine attempts to reach out to more centrist and conservative elements of the society, as an attempt to put the culture wars and their political casualties behind us. I’m sure all progressives will continue to hope so until we are provided with evidence to the contrary.
We should not, however, allow that hope to be blind, or to permit it to immobilize a political awakening that is long overdue in this country, and has tremendous potential to help solve the truly operatic problems we face. Obama has made a call to continued action another centerpiece of his campaign, and we should all take him very seriously on that call, even (maybe especially) if it causes Obama himself to take some heat from those activists. Advocating for policy positions is much less sexy than drumming up support for a political candidate, but it’s no less important to getting those policies enacted.
If Obama’s support for the agenda he rode to victory is more malleable than we would like, it’s our job to hold his feet to the fire and stiffen his spine by making sure he knows we’re paying attention and he doesn’t have our support regardless of what he does. If his interest in the progressive agenda is as strong as we would like, he still needs an engaged and active progressive movement to back him up in pursuing it, and even to advocate for bolder changes where necessary (and bold change will be necessary). In that way, whether it achieves all its goals or not, an activist progressive movement does three things; it demonstrates that he is not alone in any moves to the left that he does make, it serves as a counterweight to the furious efforts we know will come from reactionary Republicans to fight any agenda of change tooth and nail, and it provides an intellectual framework and ongoing mobilization of support for progressive causes independent of Obama’s own organization.
It has become a truism that Barry Goldwater’s defeat in 1964 galvanized the conservative movement in the US, and spawned a variety of ongoing independent conservative political efforts that have paid and still pay huge dividends for the conservative agenda, even after many of its tenets have been demonstrated as both politically and intellectually bankrupt. They have driven both the political dynamics and a media narrative over the last thirty years that has been central to conservatives’ success in winning elections and dismantling a great deal of the liberal political machinery that provided us with much of the social and economic justice we enjoyed for much of the last century, as well as a great deal of the stability and economic strength whose benefits we reaped.
It would be a game changing achievement if progressives were able to forge a new independent base of political support out of the awakening that Obama’s success was built on. It will be more difficult to forge that coalition out of success than it was to form its opposition out of Goldwater’s failure, but if doing so succeeds, it will have the advantage of not being as prone to the bitterness and bile that conservatives visited upon everyone else for decades (and that they now appear, in a very satisfying example of karmic justice, to be visiting upon themselves).
Just as Goldwater’s failures did starting in the late sixties, angry opposition to George Bush’s politics and policies made for a clear focal point for progressive energies, but the central fact of that opposition to Bush’s policies was that it was founded in a different conception of how our country should work. Now that Bush's policies have been repudiated, we should not cede all of our interest in the specifics of forming a different agenda to Obama.
A durable progressive majority will rely on a stool with more legs that it has now, and now is the time to start building those legs, not to figure out how to streamline the organization under Obama’s control. That durable majority will be required to face the changes our society has coming without detours and backtracking we can no longer afford, and nobody is in a better position to help forge such a coalition of activist progressives than Howard Dean.
