Good news

I'm getting my money's worth out of Hotline today:

We hear..

The Democratic National Committee will announce it's raised more than $17 million this quarter, capping off three $5M+ months.

And they have a bit more than $9.2M on hand.

The party should significantly enhance its coffers in mid-April when ex-Pres. Clinton holds a fundraiser for the party (his first) on April 10 in New York City.

Boo-yeah!

Dean Wins A Convert

Addendum: Hotline updates this story--

A follow up meeting last week between Dean, Reid, Pelosi, and Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Rahm Emanuel was more smooth. A source familiar with the meeting said that the five agreed that the DNC would devote substantial resources to the ground game in battleground states.

Hotline on Call, the National Journal's blog, reports that Howard has won a major convert to his 50-state strategy (revealed below--hey, gotta get you to read the whole thing, don't I?).

Back in February, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid urged Howard to give to the DSCC the same amount as the Republican National Committee was expected to transfer to the GOP's Senate committee. Reid's concern was that one big check from the RNC could erase the DSCC's fundraising advantage, thereby jeopardizing several critical Senate races.

According to three sources familiar with the meeting, Dean said no. Of course, he said, the DNC will spend millions on the midterms. His argument was this: While the DSCC and DCCC's role is rightfully incumbent protection, Dean, on the other hand, was elected chair to tend to overall health of the party. And that includes his responsibility to hundreds of non-federal candidates as well. His investment in state parties, Dean promised Reid and House Min. Leader Nancy Pelosi, would pay off and the benefits would accrue to Democrats at all levels.

Historically, the DNC has trailed the RNC but Howard has been able to cut into some of their lead since taking the helm of the DNC. Even though the RNC will have more money to spend, Hotline correctly notes that the DNC money is not going into a vaccuum. DNC organizers are using the money to find new voters and update voter files and prepare coordinated campaigns for 2006.

Part of the fundraising problem, both critics and supporters of Howard say, is that Howard has never been entirely comfortable soliciting donations, especially from big money donors.

And Dean, in the words of one of his friends, "never sucks up to donors" and is "clinical" when he discusses politics with them.

So to help with the effort, the DNC has hired Carl Chidlow, deputy finance director for John Kerry's campaign, and reportedly one of the best professional fundraisers in the party. Chidlow signed on after seeing how truly committed Howard is to competing everywhere. One of Chidlow's main jobs is to "evangelize" Howard's 50-state strategy to major donors.

Getting back to my lede:

And Dean has one supremely important new ally who, when he goes public, will almost certainly help with donors. In late February, Dean traveled to Harlem and sat down with former President Bill Clinton, often said to be privately disparaging of Dean.

But as Dean walked Clinton through his 50-state capacity-building project, Clinton became a convert. He vowed to help Dean win the attention of donors.

Congratulations, Howard!

Dean went after Bush for saying he would leave Iraq for next president.

by Floridagal

It was a thing of beauty to watch this video. I never get up early, so we missed the interview. Much appreciation to Bradblog for catching it. Howard Dean had to fight to get his points out. Soledad kept trying to interrupt, and he kept talking over her.

He also got good points in about the Medicare D bill. He pointed out that the president had the airwaves to say what he wanted, but the Democrats had to fight to get their message out. Good interview.

Video:

Howard Dean with Soledad O'Brien this morning

From the statement at Bradblog:

Howard Dean filibustered CNN's Soledad O'Brien to push the message that the Democratic Party has an effective strategy for changing the course in Iraq.

While the President Bush and the Republican noise machine are blaming the press, Dean said that the Democrats are having difficulty getting media coverage.

On the plan for Iraq, Dean said "We do believe that we can't withdraw immediately... Over the next couple of years we need to bring the troops home." On the apparent divided opinions of Democrats Dean said "There's a middle ground between Jack Murtha and Joe Biden and we think it makes a lot of sense."

Will the strategy as described by Howard Dean convince American's that the Democrats can get Iraq on track towards a resolution? Should the Democrats come together and support a single specific plan for Iraq?

Howard Dean corrects Counterpunch. Good for him.

by floridagal

On March 7, 2006, David Lindorff wrote this in an article at Counterpunch. He was totally wrong on this, and Howard Dean emailed him to please correct it. Dean's answer below. He implies it makes him get noticed as a journalist.

Groundswell for Impeachment

"While researching our book on impeachment (The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing George W. Bush from Office, St. Martin's Press, due out in late April), my co-author Barbara Olshanshky and I have found that members of Congress-even firebrands like Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Cynthia McKinney (D-GA)-have been strong-armed behind the scenes by the Democratic National Committee not to introduce an impeachment bill in the House. Rep. John Conyers, the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, where such a bill would be considered, has submitted three bills that relate to impeachment-a proposal for a special committee to investigate possible impeachable crimes by the administration and bills to censure both the president and the vice president for refusing to answer questions from Congress on impeachment-related issues--but that's as far as the Democratic congressional leadership is willing to go."

Then he gets a letter from Howard Dean, and he gives a snip of it in this article, also at Counterpunch. He lost me at "it's nice to be noticed as a columnist."

Howard Dean Tells CounterPunch: DNC No Foe of Impeachment Drive

I got an personal email from Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean today. On a Sunday morning, the DNC chief wrote me to take issue with what I wrote on March 7 in this space. I said that pressure from Democratic party leaders was the reason not one member of the House has filed a bill of impeachment against our president for trashing the U.S. Constitution.

The article clearly hit a nerve.

"The DNC is not in the business of telling Congress to go easy on this President," Dean wrote. "I'd be grateful if you could correct the report."

It's nice to be noticed as a columnist, and I will clarify my point. I agree with Dean that the DNC as an organization is not telling Congress anything.

Good for Howard for standing up for himself. Too bad he must fight the left and the right to do his job. We have a long way to go in this battle for the party's soul. Not everyone will get everything they want. Life is just not that way. Honesty is always the best policy. You got noticed, Mr. Lindorff, because you told an untruth, not because you did a good job on that particular article.

Howard Dean had it right all along

This guest editorial appeared in The Mountain Mail on Thursday.

Howard Dean had it right all along
by Donald Kaul

Dr. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic Party, is something of a joke in sophisticated political circles – a wild-eyed radical, well out of the American “mainstream.”

His signature moment, you’ll remember, came when he ran poorly in the Iowa presidential caucuses of 2004 after having been the early favorite. “Eeeyah!” he said, or something like it, as he tried to rally his disheartened troops, looking a little demented as he did it.

Do something like that once in a presidential campaign and the press never lets it go. From then on, he was the crazy one. I am indebted to the online virtual magazine “Crooks and Liars” for reminding me who he really was and what he stood for in that campaign.

In a speech Dean made at Drake University in Des Moines the year before, as the campaign began to heat up and we were getting ready to invade Iraq, he had this to say:

“I believe it is my patriotic duty to urge a different path to protecting America’s security: To focus on al Qaeda, which is an imminent threat, and to use our resources to improve and strengthen the security and safety of our home front and our people while working with the nations of the world to contain Saddam Hussein … .

“Had I been a member of the Senate, I would have voted against the resolution that authorized the president to use unilateral force against Iraq … .

“That the President was given open-ended authority to go to war in Iraq resulted from a failure of too many in my party in Washington who were worried about political positioning for the presidential election.

“The stakes are so high, this is not a time for holding back or sheepishly going along with the herd.”

...

Dean was not speaking from some peacenik sensibility that would have put him against the war no matter the circumstances. He thought this particular war was a bad idea at this time.

“If we go to war, I certainly hope the administration’s assumptions are realized and the conflict is swift, successful and clean. I certainly hope our armed forced will be welcomed like heroes and liberators in the streets of Baghdad.

“It is possible, however, that events could go differently… . Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.

“Anti-American feeling will surely be inflamed among the misguided who choose to see an assault on Iraq as an attack on Islam, or as a means of controlling Iraqi oil.”

That, ladies and gentleman, is an absolutely spot-on assessment of the way things were and how they would go, which was a lot more than the combined forces of the CIA, NSA, FBI, DOD and JCS were able to give us.

Howard Dean was one of two candidates, the other being Dennis Kucinich, who figured out what was going on. Both were treated as clowns.

The American press – “media” they call it these days – has become an embarrassment to the First Amendment. It habitually inflates the trivial and trivializes the significant.

...

Dean was also the guy, you’ll remember, who said the capture of Saddam Hussein – much heralded as a turning point in the war – wouldn’t matter much. The press’s response was to ridicule him.

How’s the Saddam thing working out, by the way?

Don Kaul is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-losing Washington correspondent who, by his account, is right more than he’s wrong. E-mail: donald.kaul2@verizon.net.

Boston Globe: Dean seen boosting state parties

Today's Boston Globe had a mostly positive story about Howard's 50-state strategy. I say mostly positive because the reporter, Rick Klein, buys into the handwringing over the state of the DNC fundraising and some fingerwagging about the proof of how effective this strategy will be is in the 2006 results. Some excerpts:

When Howard Dean took over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee last February, the selection of the man known for ''the scream" sent chills down the spines of many Democrats in Southern and Western states, where a Dean-injected dose of East Coast liberalism carried the risk of dooming the party for years.

But a year after the crusading former Vermont governor took over the DNC, the party has reacted in some surprising ways. It's the East Coast liberals who are grumbling about Dean's talk-show gaffes and staring at the DNC's near-empty coffers with dismay.

Meanwhile, many Dean skeptics in state Democratic parties -- especially in places like New Mexico, a swing state that voted Republican in the last presidential race -- have been won over. The reason is the millions of dollars Dean has spent rebuilding Democratic organizations in places that haven't seen a coordinated Democratic effort in a long time.

...

But as Dean's mini-army of more than 150 DNC-paid operatives have fanned out across the country, many rural and conservative-leaning Democrats are nodding with approval.
''I've never really been a Dean guy," said John Wertheim, chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party. ''But I've really bought into his program. Is it risky? Sure. But I think it's a darn good investment."

In Albuquerque, four energetic young staff members -- trained by and drawing paychecks from the DNC -- have divvied up the map of New Mexico, a state that was more closely divided than Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.

From a cluttered warren of offices tucked into a strip mall, the DNC's new employees are building voter lists, organizing county-level Democratic caucuses, and installing precinct chairmen in rural portions of the state that have voted overwhelmingly Republican in national campaigns.

...

Casey's state party has doubled its number of precinct chairmen and is halfway to its goal of having one in each of West Virginia's more than 1,900 voting precincts. The three new staff members sent by the DNC have given the state party more than twice its previous manpower.

Party chairmen across the nation tell similar stories. In Ohio, the five people being paid by the DNC have helped set up ''Victory Squads" -- teams of about 10 Democrats who are eager to knock on doors or set up lawn signs -- in 65 rural counties where Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry fared poorly in 2004.

Mississippi's Democratic Party has established an infrastructure in 10 counties where the organization had atrophied. The DNC has sent resources to hire five full-time workers -- up from just a single part-timer previously -- helping Democrats secure victories in five special legislative elections over the past year, party chairman Wayne Dowdy said.State parties are generally used to this kind of attention from the DNC only in the six months or so before a presidential election, and then only if they're among the small group of states that are considered in play.

You can read the entire story for yourself. I may drop Mr. Klein a note with some boring corrections, LOL.

Marcia Moody's Letter To Harry Reid

via Blog For America

Dear Senator Reid,

I am writing to you to express my extreme displeasure at your interference with Governor Howard Dean's administration of his duties as Chairman of the DNC and his distribution of DNC funds. Governor Dean was elected by the people of the states, the voting members of the DNC. He was neither elected by nor appointed by you. You and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi can dictate and do as you wish with the DLC and the DCCC. However, you have no jurisdiction over the DNC, its administration or its administrator.

Governor Howard Dean is the most forward thinking man of our time. The reason you and Congresswoman Pelosi are Minority Leaders and not Majority Leaders is exactly the reason why the Democrats have been losing election after election. You have consistently ignored all but 18 states in the election process. You have allowed the Republican party to take over state after state that used to have a majority of voters that traditionally were members of the Democratic Party.

Only Governor Dean has had the foresight to realize that Democrats will continue to lose elections unless the Democratic Party is rebuilt from the ground up and is present in every state. Governor Dean ran for the office as Chairman based on the promise that he would invest time and money in all 50 states and the 8 U.S. territories. Unlike any other politician, either past or present, he has fulfilled every single campaign promise he has ever made either as a State Legislator, Governor or as Chairman of the DNC.

In the one short year he has been in office, Governor Dean's remarkable accomplishments as Chairman have been well noted by public and the voting members of the DNC. It is not your duty nor you [sic] business to even suggest much less attempt to coerce the Chairman of the DNC to deviate from his elected purpose and break his promise to the people of those 50 states who elected him. I find your and Congresswoman Pelosi's interference reprehensible, unprofessional and indicative of just what is wrong with politics on Capitol Hill.

Sincerely,
State Representative Marica Moody

The Gridiron's not just about football

Update--3/13: Howard did attend the Gridiron Dinner, according to mediabistro.com's FishBowlDC. 600+ guests, including most everyone from Washington's A-list, attended.

The Gridiron dinner is tomorrow night. Here's a souvenir from 2 years ago:

"coz every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man."
--ZZ Top, "Sharp Dressed Man," Eliminator

"Howard, stick to your guns"

Excerpts from The Cook Report, a subscription-only column, which Kos has reprinted in full with permission.

The Cook Report - This Time, Dean's Right
Charlie Cook

No one would mistake me for the president of the Howard Dean fan club. I can't even count the number of times that the chairman of the Democratic National Committee has said things that I considered a bit over the top and that I thought contributed to the caricature that the Democratic Party has become in the minds of many Americans. In his most recent dustup, though, Dean is absolutely right. As if we were ever in doubt. --Ed.

Last Sunday, Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post reported that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada met with their party chairman and "complained about Dean's priorities -- funding organizers for state parties in strongly Republican states, such as Mississippi, rather than targeting states with crucial races this fall."

...

The primary responsibility of the DNC is not to win House, Senate, gubernatorial, or state legislative races, but to build and sustain a national party and to oversee the presidential conventions and nomination process. The same is true of the Republican National Committee. No other entities within the two major parties are charged with those missions.

In January, while giving a speech at Mississippi State University, I happened to meet a DNC staffer, a former executive director of the Oklahoma Democratic Party, who was assigned full-time to party-building in Mississippi. In the 33 years that I have been involved in politics, I have never heard of the national Democratic Party assigning a full-time staff member to organizational efforts in Mississippi.

...

The Democratic congressional leaders' shortsighted, penny-wise/pound-foolish complaints show why their party has become bicoastal. Congressional Democrats have trouble winning in many interior states, in part because leaders like Reid and Pelosi have failed to appreciate the importance of maintaining a strong national party apparatus. The Democrats' inability to consistently win elections in places where gun shops outnumber Starbucks is a big reason the party controls neither the House nor the Senate.

...

Dean's view -- that Pelosi, Reid, and their party committees have their jobs and he has his -- is the one that he ought to stick to. He should also resist pressure from interest groups, such as the Congressional Black Caucus, whose members raise very little money for the DCCC even though a Democratic takeover of the House would elevate many black lawmakers to chairmanships.

Howard, stick to your guns.

A-men!

Just who exactly is the Stooge here?

Washington Post "media analyst" Howard Kurtz crows triumphantly this morning about "major league exasperation" with the Democratic leadership. What Kurtz is referring to is Jake Weisberg's piece in Wednesday's Slate, which Kurtz describes as "a one-finger salute" to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Howard Dean.

It's funny, you know. Howard is included as a part of the Democratic leadership only when it's convenient. There are those recent reports that Nancy & Harry tried to tell Howard what to do, which implies that he's not a part of the Democratic leadership. But now he is, probably because Weisberg found the concept of "The Three Stooges" so clever that he didn't want to let it go. Would it have been too much to refer to Nancy & Harry as the Laurel & Hardy of the Democratic party?

I could live with that. I'm underwhelmed by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's been a bit of a letdown.

But we're all about Howard here so back to the matter at hand. Here are the slings and arrows flung by the outrageous Weisberg:

Howard Dean is smarter than either Pelosi or Reid and clearly stands for something. Unfortunately, what he stands for in the minds of most people is incandescent rage and upscale socialism. Dean has an unfortunate knack for making himself the issue, even when, as lately, he's trying to maintain a low profile. His injudicious comment about the GOP being the party of white Christians was followed by his statement that "the idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong." Such gaffes lead to endless debate about how Howard Dean is screwing up, rather than about how Bush is screwing up. Building on the work of a DNC pollster, Dean a few months ago took to referring to his party's base as "merlot Democrats." With him and Pelosi in charge, this threatens to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Well he gets a couple of points for calling Howard "smart." I have no truck with that--he's smarter than most of the empty suits in this town. However, Weisberg gets mega-demerits for relying on tired DLC/GOP memes. For your convenience, they are in boldface type in the above paragraph. I could recite them in my sleep.

Howard was more accurate in his assessment of Iraq than anyone else on the national scene and he had the guts to say it when no one else would.

As for the GOP being the party of white Christians, you don't think he was referring to these guys, do you?

Maybe.

As for the charge about "merlot Democrats," Weisberg says it like it's a bad thing. I like a nice glass of merlot once in a while. But to his credit, I haven't heard Howard use it lately so I think he's smart enough to have figured out it was a label that didn't quite work.

But it isn't Howard who has an unfortunate knack for making himself the issue. It's the Democratic establishment who feel threatened by him and the media stenographers who are all too happy to quote them anonymously. Oh, and the Republicans. Can't forget them. It's all about who controls the party so it's easier to aim fire at Howard than it would be to seriously take on Bush, Cheney, and the right-wing punditry who are willing to aid and abet.

Eric Alterman had this to say about Weisberg's DLC-tainted rant:

I keep reading this statement by Jake Weisberg in Slate where he is picking on Howard Dean and I can't believe it: "His injudicious comment about the GOP being the party of white Christians was followed by his statement that "the idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong." Such gaffes lead to endless debate about how Howard Dean is screwing up, rather than about how Bush is screwing up."

How in the world is possible for Michael Kinsley's appointed successor to write the word "gaffe" in this context in the magazine Kinsley founded without pointing out Kinsley's most famous observation: that "gaffe" is what Washington calls a statement by a politician that happens to be true? Would Weisberg argue that White Christians do not dominate the Republican Party? Would he argue that we are "winning" the Iraq war, or are likely to in the foreseeable future?

Clearly both Dean statements constitute Kinsley "gaffes" in the respect that both are true. And it's the job of intellectuals to congratulate politicians for speaking uncomfortable truths... at least I thought it was. I know my memory is going, but I don't recall any cases in which when Kinsley wrote about such things, he was attacking the truth-tellers. But Weisberg seems to think Dean is deserving of contempt for exactly this reason. Am I missing something or is this as depressing as it looks? (HT to Susan S over at DailyKos)

To answer Eric's question, it's depressing but no surprise. People who tell the truth are unwelcome in this town.

More on Dean v. Ickes

I contacted Matt Stoller after he indicated in his MyDD post yesterday that this is a real political fight that he has known about for months, all off the record. I asked him is the fight between Ickes and Howard proper or Ickes as HRC's proxy and Howard? I also asked if there was anything else he could add about what was going on.

I received a brief reply from Matt: "It's hard to say. Lots of confusing eddies in this story. " Matt referred me to the Hotline entry I blogged about last night. Since I last read Marc Ambinder's post, it has been expanded.

This may just be a case of two lists being better than one:

It's a reality of Democratic politics that powerful groups exist outside the party structure and a legal reality that prohibits them from obtaining the latest DNC voter data. Completely apart from Howard Dean, a second global list is exactly what many in the party's alphanumeric penumbra (the 501(c)3s, the 501(c)4s, the 527s) crave.

That said, it's hard to see why attacking the DNC's list is necessary except to be able to raise money. The CEO of the Data Warhouse, Laura Quinn, presided over the DNC's voter file databases in '04. (Dems credit DNC chair Terry McAullife with spending to collect the data.) The DNC effort was not a stunning success. Dean inherited that file, and by many accounts, he has worked to improve it. It's discomforting to some DNCers that Quinn is being touted as the savior, when it was her file that the DNC is now forced to defend. (emphasis mine)

Ambinder wrote yesterday that Data Warehouse does need more money and is fishing aggressively. I noted yesterday that it was odd for Ickes to be working with Quinn, who worked on the original database that is now being maligned as ineffective. Nice to have that little reality checked by Hotline.

More:

Of course, it's ludicrous to blame one person for failing to properly target and persuade an electorate. (Imagine A Colbert Report Caption: "Except for John Kerry".) The RNC had two years and more money to refine their targeting procedures before the '04 election and a presidential candidate who helped them construct a persuasive argument about why folks just shouldn't trust the other guy with their security.

Democrats had a muddled primary and a candidate with a muddled message and only four months (and fewer dollars) to do what their opponents did. Quinn and DNC national field director Karen Hicks (who is also part of the Ickes effort) worked under severe time constraints, to say the least.

That last graf is an excellent case against a compressed primary season.

Consider the case of the National Committee for an Effective Congress. Run by guru Mark Gersh, it's been the to-go firm for Dems to figure out where and how to target voters. The DNC works with it. The DCCC works with it. So do unions and interest groups. And many congressional campaigns. The NCEC doesn't have a voter file. It shows groups how to create them. The NCEC is a resource for Dems. The Ickes project will be, if it succeeds, another resource.

NCEC is not some creation of the DLC. It was established in 1948 by Eleanor Roosevelt with some friends to "pool the resources of small contributors from across the country and spend those funds to help elect the most progressive candidates to the U.S. Senate and House." Gersh is considered a leading Democratic analyst and while he has written for the DLC's Blueprint Magazine, he doesn't seem to be a DLC creature.

Hotline's analysis also provides a boost for Howard's 50-state strategy:

It's also unfair to blame the DNC for the dilapidated condition of statewide voter files. Turnover in state parties is high. For journalists, try and remember the last time a state party press secretary lasted longer than two years. Voter file manipulators -- good ones -- are few and far between. The DNC is helping states hire the chosen data crunchers.

What worries some Dems is this: Republicans are much more centralized. The downside of creating shadow party groups is that eventually they step on each other -- see ACT and Kerry/DNC in Ohio 2004.

I think Howard comes out looking better in this analysis than in the ham-handed write up in yesterday's Washington Post. If I have time, I may fire off an LTE to the Washington Post about Edsall's story--although they don't seem to run LTEs that defend Howard. But the bottom line here is that it doesn't appear to be a power play by Hillary Clinton but a void that the DNC can't fill because of federal election laws.

Stay tuned.

Spinning, Part 2: Are 2 Lists Better Than One?

In a comment on the previous thread, Catreona said

...this looks to me like it could be the beginnings of a parallel party structure. Forget bashing Howard, simply make him irrelavent by building your own machine.

Although previous stories seem to follow the storyline that Howard isn't raising enough money to make us competitive in the midterms, I'm not sure that "making Howard irrelevant" is today's main theme.

The more I read, the question that people appear to be focusing on is "Are two lists better than one?" Today's story in the Washington Post positioned the story as a philosophical struggle between Howard and the Democratic establishment who don't trust him.

Hotline weighs in (but doesn't really answer the question):

What's the purpose of the DNC? What should a party leader do? Whose interests should Howard Dean serve?

One foundational theory holds that the DNC should be a general election vehicle. It should spend its money to build a monster database of center-left-leaning voters and spend years refining and testing the most advanced targeting and persuasion techniques. When the party chooses its nominee, the DNC will become the engine of the campaign.

Dean's assumption is different. He believes -- and those who elected him to the chairmanship largely concur -- that party ought to be a self-perepaturing instituion designed to build upon and then project the capacities of Democrats, generally.

There's overlap; Dean wants a Democratic presidential nominee to win and he wants the party to be strong and well-funded in 2008.

But the Ickes consortium doesn't trust Dean, and like many Democrats, it's convenient for him to rhetorically set up his organization as the "anti-Dean" alternative for donors. (We hear that the Data Warehouse does need more money and is fishing aggressively.)

Don't forget too, that Harold Ickes was a contender for DNC chairman before dropping out and endorsing Howard. (An endorsement, by the way, that must have had the tacit approval of the Clintons.) Somewhere along the line there seems to have been a parting of the ways. We've always known the Beltway Democrats had no real love for Howard and they've been more than willing to supply anonymous quotes to stenographers like Chris Cillizza and Adam Nagourney.

Taking a quick look around the blogosphere, I see that Tweety is chasing this story over at "Hardball" tonight, saying that Hillary is up to some sort of power play that will take away control from Howard Dean. Opinions at Daily Kos seem to think that Karl Rove is playing Tweety like a violin:

Dallasdoc: I think Karl is genuinely convinced that Hillary is the presumptive nominee, and is already busily poisoning public opinion against her. Chris Matthews, "Democrat," is the obvious shill of choice to deliver this message. Rove probably sees Tweety as having crossover cred, deluded genius that he is.

Viktor: Here's a summary of Christ Matthews shows: Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary
He's obsessed with her like Karl Rove. Karl Rove probably works with Chris Matthews on his show.

Sounds like storyline 1a) I mentioned this afternoon: The Clintons have it in for Howard Dean. Doesn't matter if it's true but the media has been handed a narrative and they will do their best to make the facts fit.

Spinning the Democratic Party

For the third day this week, there is a Washington Post story about Democratic Party politics. And, like everything else the Post writes about Democrats, it leaves the impression that the party couldn't organize a walk around the block.

Sunday, March 5: Democratic Leaders Question Whether Dean's Right on the Money (Pg. A4)
Tuesday, March 7: Democrats Struggle to Seize Opportunity (Pg. 1)
Wednesday, March 8: Democrats' Data Mining Stirs an Intraparty Battle (Pg. 1)

Today’s front-page story is about a new data mining operation that is being launched:

A group of well-connected Democrats led by a former top aide to Bill Clinton is raising millions of dollars to start a private firm that plans to compile huge amounts of data on Americans to identify Democratic voters and blunt what has been a clear Republican lead in using technology for political advantage.

The new venture is called Data Warehouse and working with Ickes is Laura Quinn, who worked on the voter file program under Terry McAuliffe until Howard became chairman and brought his own people on board, including Blue State Digital. Blue State Digital is now under contract to the DNC and includes DFA alumni Joe Rospars and Laura Gross.

According to the Post, the DNC and Data Warehouse "will separately try to build vast and detailed voter lists -- each effort requiring sophisticated expertise and costing well over $10 million." Ickes says Data Warehouse will at first seek to sell its targeting information to politically active unions and liberal interest groups, rather than campaigns.

More:

The effort by Harold Ickes, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), is prompting intense behind-the-scenes debate in Democratic circles. Officials at the Democratic National Committee think that creating a modern database is their job, and they say that a competing for-profit entity could divert energy and money that should instead be invested with the national party.

Ickes and others involved in the effort acknowledge that their activities are in part a vote of no confidence that the DNC under Chairman Howard Dean is ready to compete with Republicans on the technological front. "The Republicans have developed a cadre of people who appreciate databases and know how to use them, and we are way behind the march," said Ickes, whose political technology venture is being backed by financier George Soros.

"It's unclear what the DNC is doing. Is it going to be kept up to date?" Ickes asked, adding that out-of-date voter information is "worse than having no database at all."

Right away I smell a rat. Unnamed advisors to Hillary Clinton claim she is concerned "that Democrats and liberals lack the political infrastructure of Republicans and their conservative allies."

In the print edition, I noticed that just before the reader has to jump to the rest of the story inside the paper, you see the sentence where Ickes and others acknowledge that their activities are in part a vote of no confidence in Howard. Even if the reader never finishes the story inside the paper, the narrative has been defined.

And the narrative of today's story is that the Clintons are aiming for Howard Dean. If you read the story, here is what you get out of it: Republicans lead in technology, Democrats can't compete, Democrats are out of date, the Republicans can tailor their GOTV messages, Democrats can't work together.

In his evaluation of Larry Summers' forced resignation as president of Harvard, Eric Alterman says, "The power of the consensus narrative in journalism is all but impermeable to reason or evidence. The right understands this and the left does not. That’s why the right worries little about nuance or getting the details straight; it’s the story that matters. Once you’ve defined the story, journalists struggle to make the facts fit the narrative rather than vice-versa."

The consensus narrative today is that Howard has risen to his level of incompetence that forward-thinking Democrats need to act independently of the DNC. This is strange because Laura Quinn worked on the database now described as having so many technical problems that it wasn't useful for state and local GOTV operations--and the purported reason why Ickes is launching Data Warehouse.

There are several storylines I see being defined that will acquire the veneer of conventional wisdom:

1) Hillary is making a run for the 2008 nomination and because Ickes is developing this new database independent of the DNC, Democrats are hopelessly unable to coalesce.

1a) The Clintons have it in for Howard Dean (hey, I remember HRC’s sour puss when Howard took the stage at the convention. I thoroughly enjoyed that moment.)

2) If voters need more evidence that Howard Dean is doing a poor job as DNC Chairman, not only is the DNC lagging in fundraising, gerbils power their computer system and voter files are on punch cards (ok, I exaggerate a bit but you get the point).

3) The Democrats can’t capitalize on GOP corruption because they have no alternatives to offer voters. And Howard Dean is doing a poor job as DNC chairman.

4) Here's one I didn't consider as I read the story this morning: Base vs Elite, small donors vs large business donors.

This is what the media will use in between now and 2008. And the midterm election coverage is just for practice. Wait until the presidential cycle cranks up. Then you’ll see some consensus journalism that will likely exceed the "Howard Dean is an angry unelectable liberal" theme of 2004.

Postscript--Matt Stoller has a post up at MyDD.com, Dean versus Ickes. Stoller says this is a real political fight that he has known about for months, all off the record.

Update--Scott Shields has his own take on the matter at MyDD.com. Shields thinks it's another case of the Post massively overstating bad news about Democrats and that while the conflict is real, he doesn't necessarily think it's a bad thing:

The fact that these are parallel efforts could serve two important functions. One is to force both entities to bring their A game and try to top the other. And data from both can theoretically be utilized and cross-referenced to produce a more refined product. While the existence of two competing efforts may cause some maniacal giggling among those at the Post, I fail to see how it's a net negative in and of itself. Once again, we're a party full of grown-ups -- unlike the weak Republicans, we can handle some internal competition.

...

Recognizing that many will disagree, the takeaway message for me is that Democrats are working fast and furious to fix something that's widely viewed as being in need of repair.

Handwringing Democrats

By my reckoning, as each quarter comes to a close, it's time for Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza to write a story about handwringing among Democrats who are unhappy with Howard's performance as DNC chairman and about DNC fundraising in general. (Adam Nagourney also has a handwringing Democrats story in today's New York Times. They seem to be his stock in trade.)

In November Cillizza wrote “Democrats Losing Race for Funds Under Dean,” which bemoaned the sorry state of DNC fundraising under Howard's leadership. It was only toward the end of the story where you discovered the truth: “In the previous election cycle, the DNC had raised $31 million, compared with the RNC’s $80 million, at this point in 2003.” So Howard actually cut the RNC's traditional 3-1 advantage (or more) in fundraising to a 2-1 advantage and raised $11 million more than Terry McAuliffe raised in 2003. Not to mention that his numbers came the year after a presidential election, while McAuliffe's came during the presidential cycle. And that Howard cut the gap in just nine months on the job at the time of this story.

Well Cillizza is at it again, and this time he brought a friend, fellow Postie Dan Balz. Why it took two stenographers--erm, reporters--is beyond me. Balz and Cillizza repeat the same tired complaints, quoting anonymous Democrats who are unhappy with Howard's focus on building up the state parties rather than raising funds for the 2006 midterms:

Democratic congressional leaders are particularly worried because the Republican National Committee holds a huge financial advantage over the DNC. One congressional Democrat complained that Dean has -- at an alarming rate -- burned through the money the DNC raised, and that Republicans may be able to swamp Democrats in close races with an infusion of RNC money.

Who are these anonymous congressional Democrats and why are they granted blanket anonymity, which further detracts from the story’s credibility? Why are Balz and Cillizza allowing them to disparage Howard publicly without having to take responsibility for their comments? The only reasonable answer is that Balz and Cillizza are trying to prop up a weak story with an overused theme.

The meeting that is the subject of this story took place a month ago. Yet Balz and Cillizza omit any explanation of why a month-old meeting is still newsworthy. There is nothing new at all about this story because the Post has published stories about congressional Democrats who are unhappy with Howard since he took office as DNC chairman. If they had their way, he wouldn't have gotten within 500 miles of D.C.

Dean campaigned for the DNC chairmanship by pledging to make Democrats competitive in all 50 states, not just in the 16 to 18 presidential battlegrounds. One congressional Democrat responded: "Nobody's suggesting they do 16 states, but not all states are equal."

And which states are more equal? What kind of test would you apply to determine that?

Frankly, I’m getting tired of reading the exact same story about the alleged Democratic unhappiness with Howard. It's time for reporters like Balz and Cillizza to begin reporting real news and get back to covering issues that actually deserve publication.

All of the scandals surrounding the Bush administration and the Republican Party are a good place to begin.