Thread: Dean Done
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Old 02-19-2004, 09:40 AM   #17 (permalink)
Sparhawk
Dubya
 
Location: VA
I loved this editorial by Maura Keefe, hope the other Dean fans do as well:

Quote:
"I am so excited about this campaign, I can barely sleep at night." That's what a member of Congress said to me early last summer about the Dean for America campaign. It seemed an incredible thing for a veteran politician to say, but I understood, because I felt the same way. We all did.



For some, it was the bells and whistles of the "Sleepless Summer Tour" or the lure of Internet fundraising that hooked them on Dean for America. For me, it was Howard Dean's clear message to Democrats: Stand for something or perish. Finally someone was speaking up against the war with Iraq, questioning the Patriot Act, exposing the hypocrisy of the No Child Left Behind Act and the Bush tax cuts. Dean had political courage at a time when Democrats desperately needed it, and people all across the country were responding.

In my home state of New Hampshire, Dean seemed unstoppable. I'd worked on dozens of campaigns, many in New Hampshire, and had never seen anything like the energy and excitement he generated. I'll always remember the sight that greeted me when I drove over the crest of a hill in the middle of the woods in Walpole, N.H., last summer. It was a full six months before the primary, yet the scene looked like a Grateful Dead show -- fields were turned into parking lots as 1,500 people with backpacks and baby strollers walked up a dirt road toward a hilltop home to hear former governor Dean speak. Dean didn't disappoint the pilgrims that day. He rarely did.

Along the way, Dean for America added a new word to campaign lexicon -- "blog": It's a noun and a verb! The Dean Weblog, or Blog, helped inspire legions of young devotees. More than once I was reduced to tears when reading blog posts, as person after person told stories of how Howard Dean had inspired them to become involved in politics for the first time. One story sticks with me -- that of a dirt-poor college student who wanted to donate to Dean's campaign so badly that he sold his bicycle.

In New Hampshire unsung organizers and volunteers (led by the incomparable Karen Hicks) were not satisfied merely to identify voters for Dean; they worked to build sustainable networks of activists that could elect Democrats at the local level. Already their efforts are paying dividends:

A 69-year-old Dean volunteer from Manchester is running for state representative, and she and other recovering Deaniacs are meeting this week to put together a campaign plan. In Bedford, some Dean volunteers have decided to run for office together. In Nashua, a Dean volunteer who lives in public housing has used her new connections with neighbors to form a tenants association to better communicate with the housing authority.

Pundits and journalists have been writing Dean's political obituary since his infamous concession speech in Iowa. The media consensus may be that the legacy of Dean for America is millions of wasted dollars, candidate misstatements and campaign missteps. Those are all fair criticisms.

But there's another legacy of Dean for America. It's personified in that elected official who rediscovered his passion for politics; the college student who sold his bike for democracy; young political organizers who learned that building community is more important than any single election; and empowered citizens across America who are taking back their neighborhoods, their towns, their cities and, yes, their country.

Working for Dean for America was not only one of the best political experiences of my life -- it was one of the best experiences of my life, period. That's what has made the past few weeks so unbearable. What was once an optimistic, empowering and energizing campaign became something quite different.

Dean for America was never about one man; it was always about what one man's leadership sparked in so many others, and about what they in turn could accomplish. But how Dean for America is remembered is up to one man. Throughout this campaign Dean has told countless Americans: "You have the power." He spoke those words again yesterday as he bowed out of the presidential race. In doing so, he made the right decision and took the first steps toward preserving the true legacy of the hundreds of thousands of people who came together across kitchen tables and computer screens to become Dean for America.
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"In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. It's - and it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work. We're making progress. It is hard work."
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