Dean owes *us* an apology

Before you all hit the comment button to flame me give me a little room to make a principled, non-mushy-DLC-type argument about why Howard Dean's loose lips are hurting the progressive/netroots cause.  Please, hear me out...

The netroots/progressive wing of the Democratic Party has over the past months been developing a narrative that the GOP leadership and elected members are corrupted by big business moneyed interests, out-of-touch with average Americans and under the control of radical Christian clerics.  It's a narrative designed to separate the GOP electeds from moderate segments of their constituency -- to illuminate the GOP agenda and its leaders as radical and divorced from the values of moderate America - so that we can move the middle to us, rather than the DLC strategy which requires us to move to them.  Let's be clear:  The strategic objective is to separate independents and moderates from the corrupt, radical GOP electeds.

Now let's look at Dean's two recent "controversial" statements: "Republicans, I guess, can do that because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives" and Republicans are "...a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party." In the rush to spin the truth of these statements as a defense of Dean we lose sight of their negative impact on the larger strategic objective.  Truth is not an adequate defense -- true or not, the both of these statements equate Republican voters with Republican electeds.  Rather than divide and separate, these statements conflate and insult. This is completely contrary to what we in the progressive netroots, who help put him in power, are trying to accomplish.

The Truth is No Defense

Dean's continuing core problem is his lack of speaking discipline. Rather than developing a set of carefully crafted talking points, designed for effect and purpose, which are repeated regardless of the question asked, Dean speaks whatever sounds right at the time. The current commotion reminds me of the infamous comment after Saddam's capture, where Dean gave a carefully crafted, major foreign policy speech that had been weeks in the making. It was to be a foundational piece of the campaign.  Dean then dropped in the comment that Saddam's capture wouldn't make us safer and that became the only news item from the speech. The truth of what he said is no defense or justification for destroying the strategic objective of that speech.

As MyDD diarist Concern Democrat notes, once again this week Dean has foolishly stepped on his own message. And he's stepped on our message too. How are we to convince independents and moderate republicans that their leaders have left them for extremists when the Chairman of our party lumps them together, calling them one and the same?

We did not elect Dean Chairman to be a truth squad. We elected him to effect a strategy of change organizationally, and to effect a strategy to grow our party and shrink support for the other party. Articulating messages that are adverse to these goals -- true or not -- are not part of his job and are not something we should defend or support.

Chairman Dean, who we in the netroots helped gain his position, has an obligation to either support and advance our strategic objective of divorcing the GOP elites from middle America or articulate an alternative strategy, devise a disciplined message and stick to it. Other than rallying the base and claiming we'll fight anywhere/everywhere I don't see any strategy at all - and he's certainly not helping our strategy.

Chairman Dean, as a supporter who wants to see you do well in your job, I plead with you: Please either develop a disciplined message and stick to it or stay off the road, out of the media and just shut up.