A good move in my opinion. While Howard Dean is unfortunately destined to be remembered as "that guy who shouted something at a campaign rally once", this incident (gleefully repeated ad nauseum by the "liberal media") belies his commanding intellect and vision, and I have no doubts that he can lead this party to compete with the Republicans in the next election without having to sacrifice any of the Democratic Party's ideals.

For example, while I can't find a working link now, I can remember reading an article about Howard Dean pushing for a "reframing" of political debate in the US. After September 11th, under the guise of "bipartisanship", the Democrats allowed the Republicans to co-opt the language of political debate and this unquestionably hurt the Democrats in the election. "Freedom, liberty and democracy", for instance, were terms the Republicans use time and time again and by doing this, they were gradually able to merge these concepts (which every American, whether they understand them or not, would like to think they hold dearly) with the neo-consevative, militant ideals of the post 9-11 GOP, to the point where the public passively accepted almost Orwellian double standards ("We must occupy a country to spread freedom, slash civil liberties to preserve liberty and supress political debate and dissenting opinions to maintain democracy"). On the other side of the coin, liberalism and secularism became dirty words (how did they ever get away with deriding Kerry for being "too liberal", for instance?). In this sense, by co-opting the language of every patriotic American (and demonising opposing view-points) the Republicans were able to effectively sell their doctrine to the American people and win the election in the face of all their glaring fuck-ups.

Dean's argument (with consultation from a linguist and registered Democrat) was that, in their attempt to sell their message to the American public, the Democrats played the game on the Republican's terms and failed to frame the terms of the debate in a way that was favourable to the Democrat's goal of winning power in the election. They kept on talking about "The War on Terror" for instance, which played right into the Republicans hands as it was a) A strategy formulated by the Republicans and b) already tied up in the public's mind (again through mindless repetition in GOP speeches and soundbites) with the war on Iraq (the execution of which the Democrats needed to do a much better job of criticising to undermine the Republican's stance). Then, when called upon to sell their own message, the Democrats failed to use the same language of grandeur that Rove was able to use to sell to the public, among other things, his "liberation of Iraq", his deficit expanding "tax relief", his homophobic "protection" of the "sanctity of marriage" and his "it's not privatisation it's personalisation" of social security (a couple more examples of the emphasis that the GOP place on the linguistics of framing debate can be found here and here). Put simply, while there is no doubt that the Democrat's policies had substance, they just failed to use language effectively to sell their message and - in an election where a mere 1.5% swing would have seen them win the popular vote at least - this cost them heavily.

This is just one example of the sort of way in which Howard Dean is accutely aware of the failures of the Democratic party (which I chose partly because I've written a lot about the linguistics of the GOP and the failure of the Kerry and the Democrats to adequately get their message across during the election campaign), but it certainly isn't the extent of his insight. Another thing he's been fighting against, is this sort of mentality (from the original article):

quote:

With Fowler's departure, the only candidate still in the race against Dean is former Rep. Tim Roemer of Indiana, also a member of the 9/11 commission. However, Roemer has garnered few endorsements from the Democratic rank and file, and he has drawn fire from abortion rights supporters in the party's base because of his personal opposition to abortion.

Is it just me, or do there seem to be a large number of "former Republicans" or conservative dissenters within the Democratic party? In the aftermath of the election, I heard repeated calls for the Democrats to shift violently to the right (and - for instance - to start being overtly Christian and denounce things like abortion and gay marriage to win back the value-laden swing voters) and during the Democratic primaries we had Joe "Repub-lite" Lieberman shitting on the opinions of any of the other candidates who dared to espouse any of the ideals traditionally associated with the Democratic party. Now I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but when you look at it from the Republican's perspective, it certainly would be in their best interests to see conservative-leaning politicians join the Democrats and undermine them from the inside. By placing a man like Howard Dean in a position of leadership within the party - as a man who firmly believes in the ideals of the party and who certainly knows how to lead and inspire - the party is much better placed to silence these internal critics and focus on progressing the aims of the party, rather than just lapsing into a sense of futility and mimicking the Republican party which would be political suicide (why would people vote for politicians imitating the Republican party when they could vote for the real thing?).

Ultimately, what I'm saying is that the Democrats need to focus on their own ideals and then work on selling them, rather than by abandoning them as a quick-fix to regain power. Howard Dean, I believe, has the ability to help sell these ideals to a public that - unfortunately - cares more about pithy principles than solid policies. Although I doubt most American voters would be prepared to vote him into power given how "liberal" and "angry" he is, I believe has the ability to generate ground-level support for the ideals his party stands for and this, I hope, will ensure the Democrats stay on the right track with their message.

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http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/

Last edited by Renegade on Feb-05-2005 at 16:07

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FLUSHED THE JOHNS!

quote:

Originally posted by imokruok

reverse psychology?