WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- It's That Man Again: Howard Dean has announced he is challenging for the job of chairman of the Democratic National Committee when the DNC delegates chose their leader early next year. He may not get it, but even if he doesn't, he has served notice that he is determined to stay in the limelight and be a power in the land.
Dean's administrative talents were non-existent in his chaotic presidential campaign, and the Democratic national establishment will probably easily keep him out of their top job. But Dean has served notice that his ambition for a continuing national role has revived. And if the economy plunges downhill during the next two years, his neo-populism may become a lot more popular with the mainstream of the party.
Currently the received wisdom is that the DNC will look for a cautious centrist like their current boss Terry McAuliffe and prepare for the next presidential election. McAuliffe, after all, presided over the most successful fundraising campaign in Democratic Party history for the 2004 presidential race and can argue that his Third Way centrist strategy led to the Democrats winning more votes than ever before in their history on Nov. 2 for Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. There is still a widespread consensus in DNC circles that they would not have remotely done so well or come within striking distance of President George W. Bush if Dean, the former governor of tiny Vermont, had been their candidate.
Also, following Kerry's defeat, the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination looks to be Sen. Hillary Clinton's for the taking if the junior senator from New York wants it, and nobody in the party doubts that she does. Clinton was already being treated deferentially very clearly as the party's heiress-apparent all through the Democratic National Convention in Boston last July. And Clinton, who has been a cautious and canny centrist since being elected to the Senate four years ago, will hardly look with favor on Dean running the DNC.
The odds therefore still appear strongly stacked against Dean getting the job. But he cannot be automatically ruled out yet for several reasons. First, he wants it and is determined to get it. Second, because of his meteoric presidential campaign, which seemed to sweep all before it through the second half of 2003 before imploding in Iowa and New Hampshire, he is a major national figure in the party with name recognition and an enthusiastic fan base among its rank and file far beyond the other expected contenders like CNN commentator and former 2000 Gore presidential campaign manager Donna Brazile; Harold Ickes, a former senior aide to President Bill Clinton; or Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack.
Vilsack is a fierce foe of Dean and played a crucial role behind the scenes in sinking his presidential nomination hopes in Iowa back in January. But Vilsack's star has been badly tarnished by his failure to help Kerry carry Iowa on Nov. 2, despite his supposed personal popularity in the state and his control of its administrative machinery.
Brazile did an excellent job organizing Gore's 2000 campaign despite the candidate's own vacillations and weird indecision and obsession over the personal image he wanted to present. But she is still associated with that campaign's failure and yet another Democratic presidential defeat.
Ickes is without doubt the candidate Clinton would choose. As a Clinton loyalist, Ickes would prove an invaluable ally for her in lining up the party smoothly and preparing the way in advance for her expected 2008 run, and the smart money is therefore on him. He is also a figure with a powerful Democratic heritage. His father, also named Harold Ickes, was the longest serving and most outstanding secretary of the Interior in U.S. history through all of Franklin Roosevelt's full three presidential terms and even into Harry S. Truman's first one.
Still, Dean will try to appeal to the anger and frustration of DNC members who know the party's grassroots members were endlessly frustrated by Kerry's failure to go mano-a-mano with Bush throughout the presidential campaign. The key reason Bush won and Kerry lost was that the Bush-Cheney campaign relentlessly attacked and smeared Kerry's character and record while Kerry never took the same hard-hitting road against him. Dean, whose record of opposition to the Iraq war was far earlier, stronger and vastly more coherent and consistent than Kerry's, will argue that the party needs to abandon its "me-too," Third Way moderation and offer a striking contrast to the GOP, and that following its whipping in the presidential, national Senate and House of Representatives races, it has lost everything already and needs above all to regain its credibility with a clear and strong voice.
This argument is much more likely to resonate with the Democratic rank and file than with the DNC decision-makers. Therefore, although Dean's challenge cannot be ruled out, it looks at the moment unlikely to succeed.
However, even if that happens, Dean has thrown down the gauntlet and made quite clear that he is not going to go quietly into the night. "We're not retreating, we're not giving up," he told an audience of about 1,000 people at a Monday night lecture in Albany, N.Y. "I will stay involved, believe me."
One way or another, indeed he will. And even if they pass him over as their next leaders, DNC delegates had better get used to that.
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