Why did Obama dump Howard Dean from the DNC in 2009?

[Napoleon]

Obama put a right winger in charge and we ended up losing 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats.

Oh come now. Howard Dean could hardly have averted the landslides of 2010.
At best we would have halved our losses.

Halving the losses would critically change the political status quo for the better.

Howard Dean also would have defeated George W. Bush in 2004 by providing a proper contrast. Kerry was Bush-lite and Kaine is a conservadem who might lose to the discredited George Allen because the base isn't interested.

[Oakvale]

I pretty much agree with everything anvi said on this.

I think 2006 and 2008 were pretty much set to be great Democratic years anyway, although I'd concur that Dean did a decent job.

But the myth of Howard Dean as some kind of political genius is hilarious. I don't really buy the idea that Dean (who, as was pointed out, couldn't even resurrect his own Presidential campaign after making a silly noise) would somehow have prevented any more than a negligible amount of the Democratic losses we saw in 2010.

Dean's become an icon to the worst elements (...IMO) of the "progressive" Democratic Party, but I don't think it's rooted in reality.

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

Obama put a right winger in charge and we ended up losing 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats.

Oh come now. Howard Dean could hardly have averted the landslides of 2010.
At best we would have halved our losses.

Halving the losses would critically change the political status quo for the better.

Howard Dean also would have defeated George W. Bush in 2004 by providing a proper contrast. Kerry was Bush-lite and Kaine is a conservadem who might lose to the discredited George Allen because the base isn't interested.

You don't see the dissonance between this and saying that Republicans would be better off appealing to moderates and not their base?

[Oakvale]

Howard Dean could possibly have been elected President if he'd run as the pragmatic, centrist that he was as Governor. As the populist yahoo he ran as he'd have lost in a landslide.

[Napoleon]

Sorry Oakie and Anvil, but my opinion is that you're both flat out wrong. Progressives were right to go after the corporate whores. Everyone hates a spineless Moderate Hero. Specter would have lostworse than Sestak. Lieberman is a pathetic troll and always was. Halter would have done better than Lincoln. The Colorado primary was more about "where the  did this guy come from?" Jim Webb would have lost without his anti-Iraq position.

Dean understands that the Democrats need a unifying identity and a national appeal. That is why he was an overwhelmingly successful chair and why I believe he would have won in 2004. There are reasons why Dean gets credit for his successes while Michael Steele is not given credit as RNC chair.

[Napoleon]

Howard Dean could possibly have been elected President if he'd run as the pragmatic, centrist that he was as Governor. As the populist yahoo he ran as he'd have lost in a landslide.

He was thoroughly progressive and pragmatic as Governor and as presidential candidate. The media just has a DLC bias.

[Napoleon]

Obama put a right winger in charge and we ended up losing 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats.

Oh come now. Howard Dean could hardly have averted the landslides of 2010.
At best we would have halved our losses.

Halving the losses would critically change the political status quo for the better.

Howard Dean also would have defeated George W. Bush in 2004 by providing a proper contrast. Kerry was Bush-lite and Kaine is a conservadem who might lose to the discredited George Allen because the base isn't interested.

You don't see the dissonance between this and saying that Republicans would be better off appealing to moderates and not their base?

Republicans played to their base in 2010 and won 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats. The candidates that lost were the ones that even Republicans thought were crazy.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Okay so as somebody who grew up in Vermont under Dean I'd like to introduce you to the Howard Dean that people who supported (and still support) him in Vermont are familiar with.

Dean was a fantastic governor in context. He didn't govern as a centrist like some people have said or as a liberal hack or populist yahoo like some other people have said; he was a little like Brian Schweitzer in that he governed from the American rural left, such as it is, in a way that doesn't necessarily come off well to leftists from more urban and/or industrial states. For example, it always has been and always will be hard to sell gun control in Vermont because we have a fisher problem, and there's a vague element of corporatism in parts of Vermont (at least more so than one would expect from such a left-wing state) because of the legacy of the period when the Proctor family of Proctorville ruled the state like kings. Dean is from an extremely privileged background and a lot of his earlier time in Vermont comes across as slumming but by the time he became governor he had the state and the people pretty well figured and he knew how one governs from the (American) left in this part of New England.

Peter Shumlin, meanwhile, is a little different. I strongly approve of Shumlin, partly but not exclusively because he is from the same village as I am, which Matters in rural New England, and was involved in founding our largest employer, a college for the disabled; but even though he's a popular governor qua governor he's hard to like personally and has (relatively) low favorables. He has a bigger entitlement complex than Dean and may or may not have had an affair a while back. He wins reelection against pretty much any conceivable opponent (certainly against Brock, for whom my over-under is getting destroyed by sixteen or seventeen points) but he's never going to be immensely beloved (except, again, by people from my area).

Anyway, after Dean entered national politics he did in fact become a hack--an immensely talented and helpful hack, certainly, but a hack nevertheless. Because transitioning from a state like Vermont to a nationwide political presence is hard.

[Oakvale]

Actually I said Dean ran for President as a populist yahoo.

[Napoleon]

Actually I said Dean ran for President as a populist yahoo.

Though that isn't actually true. Dean's campaign was the antithesis of the populist yahoo incumbent he was running against. Dean's campaign was inspiring. I think you dislike him for his foreign policy.

And yes, Bush was indeed a populist yahoo. Any chance to rave about Howard Dean, I shall take.

[anvi]

Napoleon,

My feelings about Dean are generally pretty positive.  He appears to have been an excellent governor.  I think he could have stood a decent chance in the general if establishment Democrats like Gephardt and Lieberman didn't trash-talk him, and in fact I think a ticket like Dean-Gephardt stood a decent chance of winning the general in 2004.  Even if they hadn't, Dean's platform would be been clear and the presidential race would have at least been about something important.  Kerry was a soporific, aimless gaffe-machine who, by comparison, made Al Gore's campaign look downright inspiring.  

I also agree, as noted, that Dean's emphasis on the 50-state strategy was a necessary corrective, and his inclination to light up the Democratic base in a way Rove had in 2000 and 2004 for the GOP was good politics.  To a limited degree, the Obama campaign resorted to the latter during the primary season in '08 and to the former in the general that followed.  I therefore don't really agree with his removal from the DNC chairmanship in 2009.  I think the Obama administration could have done things their own way while still calling upon Dean's talents and instincts, and I'm sure the animus that Emmanuel felt toward Dean had something to do with his ousting.  

But Democratic candidates winning general elections in modern politics, and steering legislation through a Congress with a fractured majority both require more than firing up one's own base, and I'm not sure Dean's instincts for either of these were exactly right.  Even for all the poo-pooing of Dean by his 2004 primary challengers, and counting the fact that Dean's campaign organization was not what it was cracked up to be, the fact of the matter was that he was routed in the primaries, by real Democratic votes.   The farther behind he fell, the more outspoken he became, and the more Democratic voters became uncomfortable with him, and I think the Obama campaign was worried about having their own general election campaign steered in that direction if the big lefty organizations ended up navigating it. When someone loses as bad as Dean did, those that follow aren't really tempted to repeat the pattern.

Furthermore, Dean, from what I can tell, wanted to strongarm ten conservative Dems in the Senate on the healthcare legislation, and there were very early signals that none of those ten were going to have any of it.  Since those ten votes were needed, the White House didn't go with Dean's strategy.  I think they could have been more creative and modified their approaches rather than just sacking Dean and ending up having to do lots of very unsavory dealmaking to get the health care bill through in the end.  Unfortunately, in the end, the differences between these two approaches was what would have become a bad failure (Dean) to what became a bad success (Obama).

But the idea that Dean himself, or the general strategy of running primary challenges against moderate Dems, could have stopped the route of 2010 strikes me as not supported by any evidence, but instead by mere conviction.  After the series of bills that were passed in '09-'10 combined with the ongoing recession, I don't see any way the Dems could have held onto the House.    

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Actually I said Dean ran for President as a populist yahoo.

That was liberal hack Dean, actually. Populist yahoo Dean was him for about three minutes in Iowa. The rest of the campaign was liberal hack Dean from the perspective of comparison to his term as governor.

[Napoleon]

Dean's whole campaign was meant to build the infrastructure for a national progressive movement to rise. That he was ever a frontrunner was just a confirmation that it could work. Dean entered the race determined to win, button expecting to. He wasn't a candidate of the DLC establishment. It wasn't time yet.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Dean's whole campaign was meant to build the infrastructure for a national progressive movement to rise. That he was ever a frontrunner was just a confirmation that it could work. Dean entered the race determined to win, button expecting to. He wasn't a candidate of the DLC establishment. It wasn't time yet.

Do any of these pretty buzzwords mean anything?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Dean's whole campaign was meant to build the infrastructure for a national progressive movement to rise. That he was ever a frontrunner was just a confirmation that it could work. Dean entered the race determined to win, button expecting to. He wasn't a candidate of the DLC establishment. It wasn't time yet.

Do any of these pretty buzzwords mean anything?

My translation would be '2004 Dean was a stalking horse trying to prove a point about American liberalism'.