Give Dean a Break

What a shame that Democrats from Joe Biden to Evan Bayh, Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi, find it more worth their time to take pot shots at Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean than to defend him. As a recent editorial says, these critics have nothing to boast themselves:

What his critics fail to understand is that Howard Dean is leading in a manner we progressive populists have elected him to do. We tried the capitulation strategy favored by Berg and others in the party for the better part of the last 15 years under Democratic Leadership Council-based party leadership. We progressives, at least many of us, endured and even support their attempt out of misguided party loyalty.

It failed, quite miserably. So, now it is our turn. Progressive populists are the dominant force in the party and we want to speak truth to power. We want Dean to say it like it really is: The Republican Party is 80 percent white and Christian; its agenda is dedicated to advancing the power of the wealthy and corporate America. In our view, Rep. Tom DeLay's conduct is criminal. Both are trying to lead us into a fundamentalist Christian theocratic state with a diminishment of our Bill of Rights. And Howard Dean is leading us in the grass-roots development of a populist party belief system with a progressive agenda of rights that some mistakenly consider entitlements.

By trying to be "uniters," and bipartisan Democrats are dividing a much more important entity, their party, while Republicans are just as uncooperative as usual. The Democrats on Capitol Hill don't seem to have a clue that the "Progressive populists" that are key to their party's success and are the people behind the most inspiring campaign we've seen in awhile--Dean's--are unhappy with their leadership and not Dean's.

What have the higher-ups given us in the last few years? Losers like Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt. What are we going to get from them in the future? The equally uninspiring Joe Biden, for starters. Bill Clinton wasn't successful because he was a DLC New Democrat, because by that logic, Joe Lieberman, the original Democratic frontrunner for 2004 should have won handily. No, Clinton had an outgoing and inspring style unmatched by the Liebermans and Bidens of his world.

Democrats ought to be embracing their base as the Republicans do, not running from it.