His 50-State Strategy after he became DNC Chair in 2005 yielded some sweet results: a House flip that gave Nancy Pelosi her first tour of duty as Speaker in 2006. By 2008, under his leadership, we won it ALL back. Senate AND the White House along with the House of Reps. Then he resigned and our momentum that Howard Built began to fall apart.
I remember when a group of DNC higher-ups conducted a national listening tour in 2005, ostensibly to hear out the rest of us commoners and grassroots Dems on the matter of choosing the next Chair. By the time they got to L.A. they’d already heard an earful but we were there to add another earful or four-hundred.
I went to that because even back then I was a big Howard Dean fan. It was in downtown L.A. I had to park blocks away, which was both annoying and envigorating at the same time. “You mean there are this many cars? This couldn’t all be for the DNC meeting, could it? Wow!”
When I’d finally walked the long blocks to Patriotic Hall (that’s where the meeting was held) I could barely get in. So many people! Lobby packed. All the seats in that 400-or-so auditorium. I was one of many who had to stand in the aisles along the walls. They’d long since run out of the red and green “vote cards” - only had enough for an anticipated fully-seated crowd, and not all the rest of us in the “spill-over”. But the crowd was almost unanimous. There was literally a handful (you could count the votes on the fingers of ONE hand) of votes for other candidates for DNC Chair. The other 400+ of us were all of ONE mind: ”Howard Dean. Or Bust.”
The DNC folks seated up on the dais were visibly perplexed. They had Roy Romer or some other milquetoast in mind. I think he got something like three votes in that over-packed room. There was somebody else they suggested, too - I forget who it was. Maybe ONE vote for that individual. Howard Dean? The response from the crowd was literally uproarious. Cheering and stomping and everybody with one of those vote cards holding up the green one (for “Go” while the red one signified “No Go”) and waving it around vigorously. This was a no-brained of the first order. The DNC brass found it uncomfortably unavoidable. One of them conceded that this was the same thing they’d heard all along their tour.
I’ll never forget that. Never had I experienced that kind of solidarity. We were NOT having ANYONE other than Howard Dean. The DNC folks begrudgingly conceded. They could clearly see the way the wind was blowing. A short time later they proved it by selecting Howard Dean as DNC Chair. They bowed to our massive collective demand. And good for them.
And good for all the rest of us, too. It proved out AGAIN in the next two election cycles, 2006 and 2008. Let the record show.
Howard Dean. Period.
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