Governor Dean held a couple of blogger conference calls today, one with national and state bloggers, and a smaller call with me, John Aravosis, Jane Hamsher, and Nate Silver. Given the focus of the day, much of the discussion was about where Obama is going to take this country and how Joe Lieberman fits in this this debate. Here's a portion of our discussion, amplifying a bit on Greg Sargent's and HuffPo's earlier calls.
Dean: I'll just say a couple of things. First of all, thank you all for empowering the netroots and being part of the netroots and making sure that America is restored to its greatness by making sure that individuals actually have some say over what happens in their country. The other thing is I just want to--I don't plan on fading from the scene. I'm not sure what I'll be doing next, but I do want to say how much I really have enjoyed all this and how much I've appreciated what you've put into this to reclaim the country for ordinary Americans. No matter what capacity I'm in, I plan to see you all at Netroots next year in Pittsburgh....
mcjoan: . . . I think one of the most seminal moments for us, and probably for you,åç was your "What I want to know" speech.... Six years later, looking back, has 2008 answered your questions from that speech?
Dean: The fun part about all that was is that you all made that happen. All I did--you know, it's very interesting. There are a lot of vignettes from every campaign, one of the most interesting vignettes that happened to me that left a real marker on me, going to someplace like Idaho and having a big crowd--not nearly of course as big as Barack's but a big crowd for Idaho much to the surprise of everybody, and having a woman come up and say "You know, I thought I was all alone. I didn't realize there were other people that felt the way I did." And what you all have done through this extraordinary institution that you've created, if I may call the netroots an institution, which I think it really is, is to spread that around. To make sure that everybody has a vehicle to express their own personal power. And it has transformed the country. We now have a president who is all about empowerment and bringing people together instead of a president who wants to be president of the half of the America that agrees with him. And it's just a huge transformation. I give an enormous part of the credit to the netroots for spreading the word that yeah, we do in fact have power and we intend to exercise it.
mcjoan: What more do we have to do to on that, to answer your questions?
Dean: You have to understand that we just turned a page on a generational politics. Much as John F. Kennedy was a politician that got my generation into politics, Barack Obama is the president who will bring in . . . millions of young people into politics and keep them there. And he has to now govern. You know, one of the fun parts about my campaign is that we could throw a little bomb from time to time and say outrageous things. Well you can't do that when you're governing and you've got to reach out to everybody including people sometimes you won't want to work with. Because in the long run, if you're going to get something done, everybody has to participate. I think one of the biggest mistakes George Bush made was that he wasn't interested in reaching out and he ended up alienating the majority of the American people.
So the hard part now, and you're going to have to make this adjustment, I'm going to have to make this adjustment--we won. Now we have to govern and that's a different skill set and it requires some restraint and some thoughtfulness and you know, I think I can be thoughtful. I now have to practice being restrained....
John Aravosis: (In re: the Lieberman vote) what do recommend that we tell our readers . . . when so many issues that come up that Democrats cave time after time? They keep feeling like we're getting more Democrats and we're going to have even more Democrats to cave next time.
Dean: You know, we're going to find that out. This is the big test for us. Now we have a president. There's no excuse for voting for stuff that you don't think is in the best interest of the country anymore, for not standing up for what you believe. We have a president who is going to lead us and you all get to judge whether we're leading you in the right direction or not. I think for the most part we will....
One of the things that happens when you have a party that takes over the government after it's been out of power for a while is you cannot satisfy everybody at your end of the political spectrum all of the time.... And this is where I was talking about the restraint, is making the decision about what's really worth fighting for and having the big fight inside the party and what's not worth fighting for and you have to decide what that is. One of the things that will come up early inside the blogosphere is the issue of when to get out of Iraq.... Now we have, when Barack Obama takes office, are we going to get out in July of 2010, which is 18 months, or are we going to get out at the end of 2011 which is what Bush and the Iraqis have already agreed to.
I don't know what the right answer is. Do we want to go to the mat over an additional 18 months in Iraq? I don't know that either, but I do know that we want a strong president to deliver health care and renewable energy and i"m not sure we want to attack the president if that becomes and issue. SO you see what I was saying about tradeoffs. You have to make the decisions. We're never going to get anybody who is a hundred percent with us on every issue.... But the question is what are willing to go to war on with each other over and what are we going to say, ok, this is an important issue there's some disagreement, but we can't let this distract us from climate change or health insurance or whatever other issues are....
What I'm saying here is along comes Lieberman. He behaved very badly during the campaign and did some things that inside the club are unforgivable. So if you run and get a mandate for reconciliation is your first act to kick this guy out of the party? Well, people of my generation think yeah, damn right we should. But in this new spirit of reconciliation, which is why I think Barack Obama got elected by 66 percent of the under 35 vote, maybe if not (unintelligible) I'm very willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the Senators and to Barack Obama on that one. Do we want to have a big fight over what happens to Joe Lieberman? I don't think so. I think we want to have a big fight about whether we have a decent health insurance program or a renewable energy program.
Jane Hamsher: With all due respect Governor Dean, we were just told to go screw ourselves, that our concerns for Barack Obama and our concern about the war and everything else that we fought so hard for within the Democratic party is meaningless and that Joe being happy and giving in to his threats--and he did threaten Democrats in his press conference--is more important than we are. And so I don't think it was a matter of reconciliation. I think we were told to go Cheney ourselves.
Dean: I haven't seen the blogs about this because this just happened but I'm sure the sentiment online is one of outrage. But I would line up with Barack. I don't think you were told to go screw yourselves at all. I think he has got to now practice what he preaches during two years of campaigns if he wants to bring America together and as objectionable as Joe's behavior was, and frankly unprincipled, I don't think that this is the thing that should divide us. And I don't think it's about his votes for FISA or anything else. I think it's about what kind of a tone do we want to send. Do we want a purge as the first thing we do? I don't think so.
Dean's right, we are going to have to figure out where we go from here with a new administration, what our role as the left flank is going to be, and what battles we pick. Obama and the Senate Dems decided that repudiating Joe wasn't worth the potential downsides--we'll see how that works for them in the next few years. Given Joe's track record, it could be a very bad bet on their part.
The Joe Lieberman fight was more than symbolic, more than revenge, more than anger. It's been a long-standing fight to try to make Democrats stand up for themselves and what they believe in. Lieberman obviously abandoned the core of the party when he decided to stand with Bush and McCain on the critical issues of the day.
This is a battle we had to fight, if we were going to remain true to our role in the party. There are going to be plenty more in the future, because while reconciliation is all well and good for getting elected, we need to have strong progressive and Democratic values prevail if the goals of the Obama administration in health care, in energy policy, in the economy, are going to be achieved and achieved in a way that makes the effort of doing them worthwhile.
(I'll update this post later with the full transcript of the call.)
Update: More from Jane below the fold.
