When Howard Dean first started running for President, he was an object of considerable derision among political observers. “Who does he think he’s kidding?” was the general reaction. Well, they’re not laughing now and more and more of them are taking very seriously the idea that Howard Dean could actually get the Democratic nomination. (For an idea of how this might happen, check out Daily Kos’ very plausible scenario by which Dean could beat the rest of the field.)
There are a lot of reasons why people are taking Dean so seriously now, but one is his second quarter fundraising totals: $7.5 million from 59,000 donors, much of it over the internet, where he’s clearly outdistanced the other candidates. Garance Franke-Ruta argues, however, that his fundraising success is only partly about technology; it’s mostly about the message that technology is helping get out. More on Dean’s message may be found here in another article by Franke-Ruta. Also, check out David Kusnet’s “Seriously Now: Howard Dean’s transformation from protest candidate to populist” and Joe Klein’s “Why Dean Isn’t Going Away”.
If the other Democratic candidates (John Kerry, are you out there?) hope to stop the Dean express, they better figure out a message that’ll inspire voters in the way that Dean has. To use a phrase that was popular in a slightly different context in 2002: you can’t beat something with nothing. Maybe it’s time to stop campaigning so cautiously and realize that message counts….a lot.
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
