While those Democrats pushing for Dean (Senators Harkin (D-IA) and Leahy (D-VT) are happy to be identified, those opposing the Governor's nomination hide behind a cloak of anonimity. What babies!
But conservative Senate Democrats are leery of Dean and privately question whether he would be able to work with centrists such as Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) to pass far-reaching reform.
What a bunch of hooey! Dean is himself a centrist in many ways and worked across the aisle repeatedly as a governor. Moreover, these same "conservative Senate Democrats" are the very ones in the Democratic party who pose the greatest threat to significant health care reform as they are the ones most beholden to insurance companies, big pharma, etc. They are the Clinton/MacAuliffe Democrats who came of age in the Senate during the "middle way" era of increased corporatism, lessening support for unions and the middle class, and acceptance of the conservative meme of "smaller government is better government."
Here's what The.Most.Successful.DNC.Chairman.In.Recent.History has going against him: the pettiness of Rahm Emanuel and potentially David Plouffe. The former is well-known, the latter I am taking from the article and can't speak to:
Dean clashed with powerful Democrats during his tenure as party head.
When he was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rahm Emanuel - now Obama's chief of staff - once stormed out of Dean's office after a heated argument over how to spend party funds.
[diarist note: This was after Emanuel as chair of the DCCC demanded that Dean spend more national party money in 2006 on Congressional races--Dean reportedly told him that it was the DCCC's job to fund resources for those races and the DNC's job to raise money and support the 2008 Presidential race. Emanuel was also adamently opposed to Dean's "50 State Strategy" and wanted to focus in the more traditional way of aggregating resources for blue states and a select few challengers. Guess whose strategy Obama ultimately mimiked and with which he won?]
Dean has rankled other prominent Democrats in the past. During his 2004 run for president, Dean squared off against former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt (Mo.) in an epic mudslinging match during the Iowa presidential primary. One of Gephardt's top political strategists at the time was David Plouffe, who bounced back from that disappointing primary to manage Obama's successful 2008 run.
[diarist note: Plouffe may still resent Dean's effort against Gephardt, though he seemed quite willing to emulate it this past year. Moreover, he took the essence of Dean's 2004 strategy and translated it directly in Obama's campaign with the advantage of newer and better understood technologies and the basic approach of ceding no state or region either to his Democratic opponents or the Republicans. If he still harbors any ill-will toward Dean (and I have no knowledge of that at all so I leave it as a big "if"), then he should get over it. Dean gave him the strategy to win for Obama while Gephardt frankly never had a prayer's chance in hell of taking the presidency, imo.]
As the media continues its ongoing effort to create a frame of early failure by latching onto the Republican message that Obama failed to exhibit "true" bipartisanship in the stimulus bill debate (again, bunch of hooey!), Burton ends the article with another quote from a nameless cowardly Blue Dog senator:
"I would question whether Dean would be able to reach across the aisle to work with Republicans," said one Democratic senator. "The debate over the stimulus shows that you're not going to be able to ram something as big as healthcare reform through without bipartisanship."
From start to finish, this article is a neatly packaged advancement of the failed concept (but still being advanced widely by the corporate media and Rethugs) that bipartisanship means doing what Republicans and their Democratic lackeys want, despite the fact that they didn't win the national election and that bipartisanship actually means working together to advance the national interest, not the parochial and corporate interests that got this country into this mess!!
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