Who Can Really Say?

Howard Dean, yes or no?

Eleanor Clift in Newsweek says yes:

A DraftHoward.com Web site has sprung up, and a Democratic source says Dean is planning a series of speeches ?to position himself as a centrist.? A campaign aide with close ties to the governor protests that he ?wouldn?t be positioning himself. Remember in Iowa, the nicks came from the left.? Rival campaigns attacked Dean for once agreeing with Newt Gingrich that Social Security?s growth rate should be slowed, and for winning the endorsement of the National Rifle Association as Vermont?s governor.

Jonathan Chait says no:

Why would this be such a disaster? Because, remember, the Dean campaign advanced two novel theories about national politics. The first was that Democrats paid too much attention to winning over the center. What they really needed to do was mobilize the base by nominating a candidate like Dean who'd fire up liberals. This turned out to be doubly wrong. Democrats were fired up enough that they didn't need a Howard Dean to inspire them to unprecedented enthusiasm. And a fired-up Democratic base, volunteering and donating at unprecedented levels, was not enough to win.

Second, Dean argued that Democrats didn't really need to engage the cultural issues that Republicans had long used to win white, working-class voters. Instead, Dean argued, it would be better to persuade culturally traditional whites to vote their economic self-interest. But of course, a candidate can't always decide for the voters what issues they should pay attention to. Economics is complicated. Cultural issues are visceral. The presidential election showed pretty decisively that Democrats can't get a hearing on their more popular economic platform if voters don't think their values are in the right place. A secular Yankee like Dean is about the worst possible candidate.

I think Chait get's the better part of this, but both of them underplay the significance of Dean's stance on the War. Clift said:

John Kerry?s biggest problem is that he never stood for anything that was big and bold. A headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion captured the emptiness of his campaign perfectly: KERRY?S ONE-POINT PLAN FOR AMERICA: GET RID OF GEORGE BUSH.

And Dean's problem is that he was for something big and bold -- getting out of Iraq now. It's one thing to be big and bold but it's another thing to be big and bold in the wrong way about the wrong thing. (I'm tempted to add "at the wrong time" but I'm MovingOn). Clift is right that Dean wasn't an ultra-liberal Governor of Vermont but to the country (if not sufficiently to some elements of the Democratic left) he was an ultra-liberal candidate for President. If he needs to re-position himself today it's only because of the way he positioned himself during the campaign.

There's an irony here that isn't often spoken. Half (or so) of Democratic voters were flat out against the War and in that environment it's understandable that an anti-war candidate would thrive. What's galling to the Democrats, though, is that in an election where the incumbent was clearly vulnerable they lost because their own base took them out of the game. Foot, meet bullet, and all that. Putting the poster child for that base in the chairmanship of the National Committee wouldn't, under the circumstances, seem to be the wisest thing to do.

The GOP has a base that's equally accurate when it comes to shooting feet. The lucky (for them) difference is that on the most important issue of the election (security and defense) the GOP's base aligned more closely with the general consensus in the country. The Democrats will return to power when they either shake their anti-war base (unlikely) or circumstances align the country more closely to it.