At the beginning of the year, Dick Morris, the political svengali widely credited with rescuing Bill Clinton’s presidency and helping him secure re-election in 1996, surveyed the field of Democrats planning to run against George W Bush the next year and made a prediction: ‘We can write off two of them right away: the black activist Al Sharpton, who is running to make a point, and Howard Dean, the Vermont governor, whose base is too small to sustain a candidacy.’ Well, one out of two ain’t bad.
Over the spring and summer, Dean has catapulted himself to the front of the race for the Democratic nomination. During the three months leading up to July, his campaign raised more money than any of his Democrat rivals – $7.1 million (£4.5 million) and he has managed to build a network of over 180,000 volunteers nationwide. An internet ‘primary’ organised by the moveon.org website – admittedly a favourite of liberal activists – saw him win 44 percent of the vote, with his nearest rivals trailing some 20 percent behind.
For fans of The West Wing, Dean’s background – an Ivy League-educated intellectual, former governor of a New England state, and married to a doctor – conjures up dreams of putting a real-life
Jed Bartlet in the Oval Office. For others, however, Dean’s appeal to the party’s liberal activists offers only a reminder of some of the Democrats’ nightmare defeats of the pre-Clinton era: George McGovern in 1972, Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988.
In reality, Dean is not someone most on the British left would view as particularly far out. As governor of Vermont throughout the 1990s he struck a moderate pose. Dean balanced the budget, paid off debt and cut the state income tax twice. Today, he’s happy to declare: ‘I’m much more conservative than President Bush on money’ and castigates the administration for its $200 billion deficits ‘as far as the eye can see’. ‘This federal government is no more responsible than Argentina,’ he suggests.
And while Dean may have signed the first state law allowing civil unions between gay couples, he’s won plaudits from the National Rifle Association for opposing federal gun control laws and switched his position from outright opposition to support for the death penalty in limited circumstances (just at the moment when some of his fellow governors moved in
the opposite direction). Perhaps most impressively, though, Dean’s governorship saw healthcare reforms that have ensured that 90 percent of Vermonters – including virtually all children – are insured. As president, he promises that universal healthcare will be his top priority.
Dean’s campaign has caught fire, however, thanks to the manner in which
he has tapped into the fury of Democrat activists at President Bush. Claiming to represent ‘the Democratic wing of the Democratic party’, he has attacked the allegedly supine response to Bush by the party’s leadership, its willingness to strike a deal with the President over his tax cuts for the rich and its support for the war in Iraq.
Dean’s message is clear: ‘The only way to beat George Bush is to be as direct and clear as he is. The reason people like him has not much to do with his policies. It
has to do with the fact that he has a clear, unambiguous message.’ This political strategy – of offering ‘a choice, not an echo’ – is, of course, hardly new. Throughout the 1980s, in both America and Britain, many on the left believed that their electoral defeats stemmed primarily from a failure
to enunciate a sufficiently strident and ideological response to the New Right.
But while Dean’s message may echo
the past, it’s the interaction between that and his campaign’s innovative use of the internet to create an actual political movement that has transformed him
from rank outsider to a real contender.
Dean’s fundraising and volunteer base has been built online. Beyond his official website – www.deanforamerica.com –
the campaign hosts a number of others. Volunteers run www.deandefense.org, which is the hub of the ‘Dean Defense Forces’ – activists who deluge websites
and the news media with pro-Dean opinions. The campaign also runs www.blogforamerica.com, a weblog
where its staff and volunteers can keep
in near-constant communication. Dean’s staff post photos and messages – from Chicago airport, on the road in Iowa and at a conference in Nebraska. As Randolph Court of Blueprint magazine puts it: ‘It plays a curious role in keeping activist supporters emotionally invested and engaged in the campaign. The interactivity and the cacophony of voices help create
a sense of energy – the feeling of
a movement.’
The campaign has also paid www.meetup.com – an external website, which allows people with common interests to get in contact with another – to host a section where Dean’s supporters can arrange to meet with one another. In July, thanks to the website, some 55,000 of them were able organise simultaneous meetings in over 300 bars and halls across America. There they pledged money, wrote letters to undecided voters and plotted local strategy.
The net has also been vital in raising money. Most of the $10 million Dean has raised since January has come through small donations on the internet. The style
is quirky but effective. When Vice
President Dick Cheney recently attended
a fundraising lunch with businessmen predicted to raise $300,000, the Dean website challenged supporters to raise more. Nearly ten thousand contributed over $500,000 in a couple of days.
The New Democrats who helped to propel Bill Clinton to the White House
in 1992 are, however, highly sceptical about Dean’s approach, believing that a message – and candidate – which simply excites party activists and energises core voters will not succeed in winning the election. Over the summer, Al From and Bruce Reed of the Democratic Leadership Council warned that ‘the great myth of the current [primary] cycle is the misguided notion that the hopes and dreams of activists represent the heart and soul of the Democratic party.’
They argue that the attitudes of party activists are simply not representative of rank-and-file Democrat voters, let alone the ‘floating’ independent voters that a winning presidential candidate needs to reach out to. From, the DLC’s founder, and Reed, a former top policy adviser to Bill Clinton, point out that, while moderates make up 50 percent of the US electorate and conservatives 30 percent, liberals make up only one in five. But they also note
that mobilising core voters is not – with the right New Democrat message – incompatible with reaching out to moderates. It is the strategy pursued by Clinton in his two election victories.
The DLC is concerned, however,
that the moderate reputation Clinton bequeathed the Democrats – which helped erase earlier perceptions of the party as beholden to a small number of narrowly focused interest groups, high-spending and soft on crime, values and national defence – is currently being squandered. Polls
show twice as many voters think the Republicans, not Democrats, have a clear, positive vision for the country. And, at a time when America is still psychologically reeling from 9/11, three out of four voters trust the Republicans more than the Democrats to keep the country safe in a dangerous world.
Dean’s candidacy, the New Democrats believe, is exacerbating this situation. The head of the Progressive Policy Institute,
Will Marshall, argues that the former governor echoes the ‘soft multilaterialism
of the activist left’ that first gained a foothold in the Democratic party when George McGovern won the 1972 nomination. The result: the Democrats suffered the worst landslide defeat in US history, winning only the liberal state of Massachusetts and 38 percent of the popular vote.
In a recent poll, Democrats were asked whether they would rather opt for a candidate who shared their views on almost all the issues or one who could beat George Bush. Nearly two-thirds, including 69 percent of liberals, opted for the latter. As the primary season draws closer, Howard Dean’s candidacy – modern in
its style but outdated in its message – will pose them that very choice.
