[Mb-civic] Why I Like Dean-Michael

[Robin McNamara]

Michael

I totally agree with you about Dean, he got a "bad rap" during the election.

Peace
Robin



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Butler" <michael at michaelbutler.com>
To: "Civic" <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005 11:57 AM
Subject: [Mb-civic] Why I Like Dean-Michael


>I do hope he is made the Chairman of the DNC. He has proved the ability to
> organize cross country/sex/ethnic lines which is so needed. He will 
> inspire
> followers not as a candidate but as an organizer.
> Michael
>
> The New York Times
> February 5, 2005
> OP-ED COLUMNIST
> A Short History of Deanism
> By DAVID BROOKS
>
> As you may recall, Ralph Kramden was a member of the Raccoon Lodge in "The
> Honeymooners."
>
> Back in the 1950's, tens of millions of Americans were members of 
> fellowship
> associations like the Elks Lodges, the Rotary Clubs and the Soroptimists.
> These groups had lodges or chapters across the nation, where the affluent
> and not so affluent, the educated and not so educated, would get together
> once a week or so for schmoozing and community service.
>
> But as Prof. Theda Skocpol of Harvard has demonstrated, these fraternal
> associations lost members in the 1960's. Instead, groups like NOW, Naral 
> and
> the Heritage Foundation emerged as the important associations in American
> life. But these groups were not like the old fellowship organizations.
>
> Many of these groups were formed to champion some specific cause. Instead 
> of
> relying on a vast network of local chapters, they tend to organize their
> work from central offices in New York or Washington, with a professional
> staff. They raise money through direct mail appeals or by asking for
> foundation grants.
>
> These new groups are dominated by experts - people who live within the
> network of grant officers, activists and scholars. Being a member of one 
> of
> these organizations doesn't generally involve going to a local lodge once 
> a
> week and communing with your neighbors; it involves sending a check once a
> year and reading a newsletter.
>
> Furthermore, as Skocpol observes in her book "Diminished Democracy," these
> new organizations tend not to bring people together across class lines. In
> 1980, at a time when about 15 percent of the electorate had a college
> degree, roughly 80 percent of the members of the Sierra Club and Naral 
> were
> college graduates.
>
> The decline of fraternal associations and the emergence of these
> professionally run groups for the educated class diminished communal life.
> The change also reshaped politics.
>
> Since the 1960's there has been a breakdown in the machinery that allowed
> Americans to work together across class and other divisions. The educated
> class has come to dominate, and the issues of interest to that class
> overshadow issues of interest to the less educated and less well off.
>
> But the two major parties were affected unequally. The Republican 
> coalition
> still contains some cross-class associations, like the N.R.A. and the
> evangelical churches, which connect corporate elites to the middle 
> classes.
> The Democratic coalition has fewer organizations like that. Its elite - 
> the
> urban and university-town elite - has less contact with the less educated.
>
> Not coincidentally, Republicans have a much easier time putting together
> electoral majorities.
>
> The story doesn't end there.
>
> Over the past two years, what we might loosely call the university-town
> elite has come to dominate the Democratic Party not just intellectually, 
> but
> financially as well.
>
> Howard Dean, in his fervent antiwar phase, mobilized new networks of small
> donors, and these donors have quickly become the money base of the party.
> Whereas Al Gore raised only about $50 million from individuals in 2000, 
> John
> Kerry raised $225 million, including $87 million over the Internet alone.
> Many of these new donors are highly educated. The biggest groups of donors
> to the Dean and Kerry campaigns were employees of the University of
> California, Harvard, Stanford, Time Warner, Microsoft and so on.
>
> They tend to be to the left of the country, especially on social and
> security issues. They may not agree with Michael Moore on everything, but
> many enjoyed "Fahrenheit 9/11." Perhaps they are among the hundreds of
> thousands of daily visitors to Daily Kos and other blogs that savage
> Democrats who violate party orthodoxy.
>
> Many Republicans are mystified as to why the Democrats, having lost 
> another
> election, are about to name Howard Dean as party chairman and have allowed
> Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy to emerge unchallenged as the loudest 
> foreign
> policy voices.
>
> The answer, as Mickey Kaus observes in Slate, is that the party is 
> following
> the money. The energy and the dough are in the MoveOn.org wing, which is 
> not
> even a wing of the party, but the head and the wallet. Only the most
> passionate and liberal voices can stir up this network of online donors 
> from
> the educated class.
>
> Howard Dean may not be as liberal as he appeared in the primaries, but in
> 1,001 ways - from his secularism to his stridency - he embodies the newly
> dominant educated class, which is large, self-contained and assertive.
>
> Thanks to this newly dominant group, the Democrats are sure to carry
> Berkeley for decades to come.
>
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