I think Tim's exactly on the money. On one level, I am pleased for Howard Dean that he won the Chairmanship, because I think it's got to vindicate him that a year after (in my opinion) the DNC did everything in their power to shipwreck his candidacy, this year they're kissing his ass (something which I predicted would happen in the event of a Kerry failure, even before the nomination eluded Dean), but I don't know how healthy it is for the party. I think that Roemer's analysis is correct, and I think that he may have done a better job than Dean will now do.
I think that Dean will put everything he has into rebuilding the Democratic party, and I think he may make a lot of headway in rebuilding the grassroots, but what I don't believe that he's going to do is to put the democrats back into shape to win the next election. I say that for two reasons.
First, because he is setting up a tension - which can only increase - between the efforts of the potential 2008 nominees (Clinton, Bayh, who knows, maybe even Roemer, etc.) who realize that the party has to come back to the middle to win an election, no matter where the middle may be, and its Chairman and footsoldiers, who want to pull the party away from the center, in the hope that the center will follow. What do we learn about a house divided against itself?
Second, because the conclusion after the 2004 election was that the Democrats did a superb job of getting out the vote. They mobilized a huge number of their core supporters - and it
still wasn't enough. A party cannot win simply by playing to its base, particularly a party with whose agenda public consensus does not lie. The GOP has engaged in a long-term project to move the tone of public debate beyond the New Deal consensus, which helped the Democrats in the latter part of the last century. Under the New Deal consensus, the Democrats could win by playing to their base, because public consensus was much closer to that base; what Democrats seem to understand intellectually, but inexplicably reject the practical implications of, is that this consensus has now shifted - after three decades of assiduous work by the GOP, its activists and its intellectuals in think tanks - to a consensus much more in sympathy with conservative views. The center of political gravity has moved. The upshot of this is that playing to their base - Dean's ostensible goal - is not going to win them 2008, or any other election, in my view.
And all of this analysis ignores the long-term political impact of internal migration into the red states, something which is going to continue to drive up the GOP's numbers in the House, and will tend to favor GOP Presidents in the College, unless and until the College is supplanted with a direct vote - something unlikely as long as red states hold the keys to that particular kingdom.
Got to go, Senate Finance is in.
