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What Howard Dean Has Not Done Susan EstrichIn the long run, the critical question for Democrats may turn out to be not what Party Chairman Howard Dean is doing, but what he isn't doing. The answer to the first question is easy. What he's doing is what he has become known for: shooting from the lip. This is, after all, the man who went from front-runner to also-ran in a matter of weeks, on the strength of a series of mistakes that convinced the most liberal Democratic voters in America that the guy was not ready for prime time. The much-remembered "Dean scream" came after he lost, not before – he was already dead, politically speaking, by then. Story Continues Below So it should come as no surprise to experienced Dean watchers to hear him say that most Republicans have never earned an honest living. This is what it means not to be ready for prime time. You make the sort of statements that are sure to get attention because they hit flash points like class warfare. It's a Republican talk show host's dream. The reason other Democrats don't say such things is because you don't win elections this way. In point of fact, of course, what Dean is saying is wrong. Most Republicans are not coupon-clippers – they go to work and earn a day's pay like the rest of us. And hearing Howard Dean say otherwise offends not only Republicans but also moderates and independents who have no taste for class warfare or the strident liberalism that Howard Dean is selling. But that's not really the problem with Dean. In seeking the party chairmanship, he promised not to run for president. I'd be willing to bet that Howard Dean will be well out of the picture by the time November 2008 rolls around, having been replaced by someone with less of an appetite for insulting would-be voters and donors. Dean's words may be causing their share of headaches in the short run, prompting such prominent Democrats and potential candidates as Sen. Joe Biden and former Sen. and vice presidential candidate John Edwards to publicly diss the party chairman, but that's mostly inside baseball and hardly the stuff that is likely to move voters and decide elections. What is far more troubling is what Dean may not be doing, and what his counterpart, Ken Mehlman, almost certainly is. According to the latest reports, Mehlman and his RNC have outraised Dean and his DNC by a factor of about three to one: $42 million to $14 million. Three top DNC major fund-raisers have left in recent weeks, among conflicting reports as to whether their departures are routine aspects of the normal transition to new leadership or a sign of the move from a focus on large donors to the grass-roots small-donor base that Dean emphasized in his own campaign and has been talking up since. The truth is that the Democrats must do both if they are to be competitive. It doesn't matter very much what the party leader sounds off about – there are plenty of Democrats with bigger bullhorns than his. But he is the only one whose job is to put together the technology that the 2008 candidate will need if he is to have the ability to pull off what Karl Rove did in 2004, and then some. At the time Dean pulled out of the race in 2004, his much-vaunted Web site was getting one-tenth as many hits as George Bush's. Even more important, the Bush team, under the leadership of then-Rove deputy Ken Mehlman, was embarked on a sophisticated technological project that allowed it to communicate with voters in key states and key groups the same way Amazon does with regular purchasers: Understanding more than name, address and serial number, Amazon knows what I like, and what my family likes, and what other people like me like, so that when they write to me, they know how to sell to me. So did Bush. On the Sunday before the election, Karl Rove was in a position to squeeze out every single Bush voter he needed, a capacity Democrats couldn't match. The good news for 2008 is that while Republicans squeezed out every one of their voters, there were more Democratic votes left on the table. The bad news is that they still may be there, unless Democrats start doing what needs to be done. It isn't glamorous work. It doesn't make headlines or prime-time news. You don't need a big mouth or a high profile to do it. But if you do it right, you win. Unlike name-calling, which wins you nothing. Not even, in the long run, continued tenure at the DNC. COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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