When I posted a couple of weeks ago about the idea of drafting Howard Dean, it was mostly out of my pretty serious disappointment with having to choose between Clinton and Obama. They have some superficial differences, but both are right-of-center Democrats who are unlikely to do anything drastically different from George Bush. Dean, on the other hand, is more progressive than either, and represents a much better possibility of departure from the disastrous agenda the Republicans have put us on.
This piece in the latest issue of The Nation by Ari Berman looks at the accomplishments Dean has made running the Democratic Party, even when the big guns from the Clinton camp tried very hard to marginalize him. Berman also asserts that the success of Barack Obama can be directly attributed to the success Dean has had with building Democratic Party organizations at the grass-roots level. Indeed, the seemingly floundering Clinton campaign, which quite deliberately stuck with the old-boy-network school of campaigning, lends even more credence to Dean as a politician. The article does not come right out and say it, but in its description of the emerging power of Howard Dean in the Democratic Party, it implies that Howard Dean may not be consigned to the ashcan of history just yet.
So, given the unlikely situation that the Democratic convention would pick a candidate out of thin air, I guess I’ll step off of the “Draft Dean” soapbox and climb up onto the “Dean for VP” soapbox. There are a number of decent reasons to choose Dean as a running mate — his previous popularity, his newly-found political sway in the party, the advantage he would have as an incumbent VP running in 2016, and so on. He also would not necessarily overshadow Obama — no presidential candidate wants a running mate who can be perceived as a political threat (a problem I think John Kerry had with John Edwards). In fact, given that Edwards is a potential running mate, I think Dean is a better choice than Edwards, even though the “conventional wisdom” says you have to have a Southerner on the ticket. Dean might also be able, once in office, to keep Obama on the progressive path, since Obama’s own tendency is to cave in rightward.
Plus, “Dean in ’16!” has a good ring to it.
