corrente

Nice slogan, eh? One that reform Democrats, as opposed to the gutless, feckless Beltway variety, would do well to adopt. Matt Singer is a Democrat from Montana and, believe it or not, Democrats can win there. Read his hopeful words:

Something that the DNC (and by DNC, I mean every person stuck in the Beltway mindset) needs to get through its head is that Dean was never running as a left-winger. He was never even running as a hardcore liberal. He was running as a centrist outraged over what was being done to his country.

And for a damn good reason, what is happening to our country is outrageous.

And the Democratic Party gets ready to act out its own death on stage again. We are a party of hypochondriacs. Every time we lose, we’re convinced we’re deathly ill. In Montana, in 2000, Democrats lost three big statewide offices. They lost the Governor’s race, the US House race, and a US Senate race. They thought the world had ended. We just bucked up and kept working. And in 2002, we won a US Senate race, more seats in the legislature, and control of the Public Service Commission.

This year, we took back the damn Governor’s office. And we didn’t do it with a namby-pamby-roll-over-and-keep-your-mouth-shut style. We did it by running a candidate with clear contrasts with the Republicans and by pointing out how we would make the state a better place.

And it is high damn time we did that for America. We can’t expect the press to show how we differ from the Republicans or even why one would want to differ from the Republicans. The press typically knows how to do its job about as well as the 15-year-old-with-acne flipping burgers at McDonald’s. The difference between the media and McDonald’s? The latter contains essential vitamins and minerals. The only way something worthwhile ends up in the paper is if we get it in there. The only way people find out the truth about the Bush White House is when people bring the truth up.

You’re actually going to have to work. You’re going to have to draw distinctions. You’re going to have to have a message. A clear message. A concise message (no rants like this one). A damn compelling message.

And if you can’t do that with a sandtrap in one hemisphere and a looming economic collapse in another, well, maybe you aren’t cut out for this line of work. And so when the usual suspect DC press corps types start portraying Howard Dean as “bash-Bush, man-the-barricades liberalism mixed with the latest in Internet-fueled fund-raising and organizing” I get a bit upset. Frankly, we can bash Bush. The man is not very popular. Bashing him is at least a strategy. And that seems to be more than anyone else has.

Dean was never that liberal. He was willing to get out there and fight. We need a fighter. The Democratic Party keeps expecting the referee to protect us and hit back for us. That isn’t going to happen. It is time to “declare the state of affairs unacceptable.” It is time to stand up for ourselves. It is time to fight. It is time to reform the Democratic Party and then to reform
America.

Draft Howard.
(via Matt Singer)

What Matt said.