An imagined conversation with my future grandson
What? You want to know about a time when I wasn’t such a crusty old bastard so down on Democrats? You want to hear about a piss-filled young progressive? Well pull up a chair Jason990. Let me tell you a little story about the olden days. It must be about forty years ago now that a man named Howard Dean came down from Vermont made some rumbles and raised some money online talking like a genuine Democrat. Why, he went right ’round the usual fundraising and appealed directly to the folks out there for $20 or $30 bucks at a shot.
Well, the people were right parched for a nice cool drink of undiluted Democratic speechifying and they came to that campaign by the bus load. I even started a blog back then to help support that campaign and pour rhetorical boiling oil down on all the Republican Morlocks, and the Democratic compromisers and bank lovers. ‘Course the national media and all the DC insiders couldn’t stand it so they put on the TV lynching of that campaign. But for a few months there it really looked like the Democratic Party was going to run an actual Democrat in an election.
But Gramps, after Howard Dean showed what could be done, why didn’t other authentic Democrats do that?
Fuck if I know.
You forgot to reminisce about the time you ran for Congress in 2014 as an “authentic Democrat”. “Fuck if I know” indeed.
I was actually thinking about that (and making a very similar observation to myself) in regards to this post. My personal journey aside – it “pains me” that the Dean model seems to be in some sort of disrepute.
I agree with you about the Dean model, actually. He did great things for the DNC as chairman, too.
Wouldn’t it be fair to say that the Dean campaign was done in by the Democratic primary voters? They had the ability to take their choices themselves!
Of course, it’s fair to say that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) did the same things concerning fund raising, and he won. The biggest problem is that, once he got in office, he started to actually govern like a Democrat, and made the whole country worse off.