Reporting from Yearly Kos 2007: Howard Dean and the Netroots

by Brian Beutler, The Media Consortium: Fri., Aug 3, 2007
Filed under: Media Consortium: journalism project

Two interesting things happened last night at the Yearly Kos opening plenary. Howard Dean gave a rousing speech, and an organizer announced–to a round of “boos”–that Hillary Clinton will not attend her scheduled “break out session” with attendees after her appearance on Saturday. But that was after Dean’s performance.

It’s interesting to note that Dean now rides high on a popular strategy that, before the 2006 elections, threatened to kick him into irrelevancy.

In a speech focused largely on vote suppression , on vote undercounting and voter turnout, Dean emphasized that perhaps the largest problem–one at least as large as corruption or intimidation by the right–is lack of outreach and access to information at the local, and especially low-income level. To that he pledged, as part of his 50-state strategy:

“We’re going to put together a handbook for every single candidate on the Democratic side to tell us where the problems are… ten months, not ten days before the election.”

That very strategy once threatened to stamp out Dean’s political career. It has instead revitalized it. As was apparent watching his roaring reception–in an enormous banquet room, filled to capacity, in Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center–Howard Dean has become a mythic figure to the netroots. His loss in 2004 has left him with no less esteem among his then campaign supporters. They’ve just become better organized and more numerous. Famous, now, are his feuds with establishment figures like Rahm Emmanuel. Less well known, perhaps, is the fact that the base has taken sides. When Emmanuel’s name was mentioned by the master of ceremonies here tonight, it was met with tepid, almost reluctant, applause. When Dean took the stage he was met with a durable standing ovation–an ovation that grew most strong when Dean promised “we are going to make them vote on Iraq again, and again, and again and again.”

Howard Dean has often been chided for his political awkwardness. But, though too optimistic on the war and on the state of civil liberties in America, his speech last night was masterful.

“What you have done in the last six years,” Dean said, “is set this country on the path to restoring the Democracy that George Bush and the Republicans have tried to undermine.