WTF?

Pardon my French but this is the only charitable thing I can say about Noam Scheiber's story in The New Republic Online (subscription required):

Last year, a major Democratic donor from the 2004 presidential campaign received a call from some operatives at Howard Dean's Democratic National Committee (DNC). Dean was coming to town in a few days, they told him, and they wanted to schedule a meeting. Political fund-raisers normally make such calls a month in advance, and so the seat-of-the-pants approach didn't go over well. "You can't call me the week before and say, 'Hey ... we'll be there Monday, want to hang out?'" says the donor. "They had all these fucking hippies.... These are people that are great to raise a few $500 checks, plan a party at a nightclub. But they're not the folks you need to give you [the resources] to do the things you want to do."

Give. Me. A. Break. As Matt Stoller says over at MyDD.com, "There are two claims: Dean can't deal with high dollar people, and he won't spend money on 2006."

More from Stoller:

The piece, though, is just ill-informed. Scheiber clearly talked to a bunch of insiders mad that Dean isn't a 'traditional' party chair. Well why should he be? The DNC Chairman is actually an elected position, and Dean made campaign promises to the people who elected him. These include (a) building up the state parties (b) not focusing on DC (c) not focusing on swing districts and states (d) and giving money and resources to state parties. I didn't like the proposals at the time, but Dean won fair and square. I respect that, and so should the rest of the party. But they don't.

While Reid and Pelosi and Rahm and Chuck might bitch about Dean 'not playing the traditional party chairman's role', where were they in February of 2005 when the elections were held? Why did they let uber-local pol Donnie Fowler become a near kingmaker? Why didn't they endorse or get involved in a serious way? There was an election for this position, a position that was clearly going to control hundreds of millions of dollars and party resources in the next few years. Was this election below them? Apparently. Well Dean was elected and he is doing what he promised.

It's time to let go of the canard that Dean is an outside-the-Beltway hick who doesn't know his ass from his elbow. It's long past the expiration date.

I'm amazed there are people who still don't have a clue about Howard Dean. It's their loss.

(HT to Atrios where I first read about this hatchet job.)