Even More Howard

Kossack aimai was lucky, lucky, lucky, last night. She attended a DNC fundraiser last night, a reception and dinner for Howard. And Jim was there as well.

At the dinner the Governor spoke briefly about the 50 state strategy and what they were doing. He took questions from all sides and they were pointed but very supportive. He really showed his familiarity with every race, the polling in every region, the issues from the top to the bottom of tickets (people were constantly coming up to him and telling him personal stories about friends running for very low level positions because of Dean's influence on them and his insistence on really grass roots level politicking.)

[...]

He is very aware (and so was everyone else there, even quite elderly people) of the blogs, of dailykos (mentioned prominently by one of the donors), of the issues the bloggosphere thinks are important. Some of the things we talk about daily--framing, messaging, aggressive partisanship, were discussed in quite a bit of detail and Dean seemed very familiar with all the ins and outs. He argued that we could pick up the needed seats in the house, though he was sceptical about the Senate, but he stressed the need to keep our candidates on message. And he felt that was a difficult task, more difficult than it needed to be, because of the more or less free agent nature of the democratic party (my words, not his) and the inherent indpendence of the liberal mindset--that makes us "good at governing but not good at running elections" was his take on it. Keeping the candidates on message, 24 hours a day, until the election is important because (although he didn't use this phrase) it enables the public to grasp the brand/Democrat. It gives the public confidence that the democrats are a known quantity. He pointed out, in a wide ranging discussion,that this can be bad for individual politicians because its a risky proposition for them but that its good for the party ultimately because it helps the party define itself agressively. The analysis was strikingly good and he went back a bit historically to back it up.

He alluded delicately, and politely, to the DCCC/DSCC/DNC infighting but said that, in some ways, it had ended up being very good for the 50 state strategy because if there hadn't been so many complaints about it it wouldn't have been as well publicized as it had been and, since it resonates so strongly with the grassroots and the electorate, that publicity is important. Another example of "every knock's a boost." One of the Donors who had made many phone calls to help organize the events said she found that everyone she called to raise money knew about the 50 state strategy and was very enthusiastic.

Read the entire post, "My Dinner with Howard Dean."

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