A very good article appeared on Raw Story about James Carville's campaign to oust Howard Dean from the DNC Chairmanship, and how that contrasted with Rahm Emmanuel's decision to bury the hatchet WITH Howard Dean instead of in the middle of his forehead.
The article inspired me to leave behind the following comment. More on this subject will be coming soon...
It seems to me that the real story here is that Rahm woke up and smelled the Vermont-roasted coffee and realized that to avoid too much discussion of how he and his fellow strategists SCREWED UP virtually all their calls during the campaign, he'd have to make nice and be magnanimous and essentially join the winning team.
Emmanuel virulently opposed Dean's 50-state strategy and systematically picked LOSERS like the combat-disabled-yet-still-pro-war Tammy Duckworth (who's mixed messages on the war earned her only an ultimately-fatal lukewarm response from the voters) instead of genuine progressive candidates with legitimate grassroots (and netroots) support.
Time after time, pro-war, republican-lite, socially conservative candidates were showered with money and support, many times only to fail miserably in the Democratic primaries. Undaunted by this rebuff of their preference, Rham then (often with Dean's capitulation, sadly) totally froze out the victorious grassroots candidates. Despite this, many of these candidates actually won, while Rham-supported conservative primary victors were almost universally swept in district after district.
Dean's strategy is an excellent start, and the perfect example of party-building strategies that have a long-term likelihood of success. Progressive activists need to continiously pressure the Democratic party to get it's collective heads out of their Carville-minded posteriors. Such behavior only keeps them from being able to see what's really going on, plus it make their hair smell terrible...
