Already Dean’s strategy is looking good.
But following the Mark Foley scandal, Democrats are talking about not just winning the House but piling up as many as 40 new seats and also capturing the Senate. And some of the places where they are now competing lie in the blood-red states where Dean has been on his lonely crusade to find blue voters. In Idaho, where President Bush won 68.4% of the vote in 2004, Democrat Larry Grant is close enough to winning a House seat that Vice President Dick Cheney and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert have made visits to campaign for Grant’s opponent. In Kansas, G.O.P. incumbent Jim Ryun had Cheney in town to raise money in his race against Democrat Nancy Boyda. Democrats are holding out hope in two House districts in another Republican stronghold, Nebraska.
Even better – come 2008, we won’t be ignoring half of the country for a change.
Howard Dean deserves a whole lot of credit. From the start he was right on Iraq, as opposed to the party elite, and he’s right about the 50-state strategy, in contrast to the Washington insiders. Personally, I think we nominated the wrong New Englander in ‘04.