(cross posted to Broadsides.org)
It looks like Vermont’s own Howard Dean is finally getting some heat for his complete inability to handle the Democratic delegate nightmare that is playing out in Florida and Michigan. As the head of the Democratic National Committee, this delegate fiasco has been occurring on Dean’s watch from the beginning when the two states first defied the party’s wishes regarding the timing of their primaries. And now Dean’s DNC is striking out in its attempts to find a happy ending to the mess.
Worse, it sure seems like Dean’s been playing his all-too-familiar duck and cover game with a political hot potato. Where, exactly, has he been during the public discourse on this mess? I’m no casual media watcher and I haven’t seen him at all.
It’s pretty clear that the Dem party power elite don’t think much of Dean anyway. I heard one pundit just scoff at the idea of Dean pulling the Obama and Clinton camps into his office to hammer out a deal, saying, “He just doesn’t have the stature.”
Vermonters, of course, are used to this kind of hiding from Dean. When the Vermont courts forced the legislature to pass the law allowing “civil unions” between gay and lesbian couples, Dean literally hid in his backroom (closet?) when he signed it. It was a most cowardly act and a major finger to the eye of the many people who worked hard on the issue and deserved the kind of public acknowledgment that normally accompanies such an historic occasion. But not with cowardly Howard – he just signed it in the backroom and then, years later, bragged about his involvement with the law on the national stage.
But it’s time for Dean to come out of hiding while the delegate mess continues to zap energy, time and focus from the real issues at hand. He’s got to stop acting like the hiding child while his parents fight in the other room. Dean is the chairman of the Democratic Party. And he needs to start acting like it.