In his interview with Diane Sawyer, after his raucous, fist-pumping speech at the Iowa Caucuses that quickly gained notoriety as "the shout heard round the world," Dean said something quite significant: "You have to understand," he said calmly, "I was talking to 3,500 kids who had worked non-stop for me" (I am paraphrasing).
The statement was a welcomed bit of substance in Diane Sawyer's otherwise pedantic and mundane investigation into the governor's demeanor and the intimate value of rhododendrons.
Whether Dean wins the Democratic bid for president or not, his lasting contribution will be that he has revitalized the party with a new populism driven not by corporate dinner parties, but by young individuals. Dean has made significant headway in conquering the Democrats' Inferiority Complex, and by charting a new path that has young Americans at the helm, he has given our generation a reason to feel empowered.
Dean's appeal to the crucial 18-24 year old demographic sharply contrasts a 25 year trend toward conservatism. Last fall, two Democratic strongholds in the South fell to the Republican sweep that has dominated the region for the past 30 years. In both Mississippi and Kentucky, the Republican candidates won decisive victories. In the latter state, Kentuckians elected a Republican governor for the first time in 32 years.
I happened to be in Kentucky over the summer when the race between Democrat Bill Chandler and Republican Ernie Fletcher was heating up, and struck up a conversation with a Chandler campaign worker. He seemed particularly concerned that the crowds Chandler attracted were all old--not just retirees looking for their next social security checks, but old retirees who were Old Democrats. That's a small demographic. And when the only people you attract are those who, frankly are only Democrats because that's what they've always been, then you've lost a generation of elections. The campaign worker then compared Chandler's crowds with Fletcher's: "They're all young," he said of the latter's. Fletcher went on to win in a land slide.
Since Richard Nixon's two decisive victories 36 years ago, Democrats have become pessimists, not willing to stand up for their base because they don't believe that being Democratic can win an election. The party acquiesced when faced with the Reagan Revolution, and has tried to co-opt Republican issues and even policies as their own ever since. The "triangulation" strategy, popularized by Bill Clinton, has thrown the party into convolution, rendering it unable to reconcile values and policies, and leaving new-age Republican dogma as the fresh-looking alternative.
But Democrats have lost much more than both houses of Congress, the White House, and numerous governors' seats: they've lost us. Our demographic has always been a key Democratic constituency--despite the rise of the "young Gippers"--and a sense of persistent alienation from the Democratic Party has translated into an overall decline in voter turnout among college students. In 1968, 51 percent of all 21- to 24-year-olds voted. By 2000, that figure had plummeted to 35 percent.
Any political analyst knows, of course, that an election also depends on the temper of the times. Numerous social, economic and global factors were at work in the 1970s, not the least of which were a worldwide economic recession, the Vietnam War and two oil crises that did not favor the Democrats. The key is to know what the political wave is, where it is going and how to ride it. That is what makes Dean the clairvoyant in this race.
Dean knows that political dominance runs in cycles. The global economy fell into a recession in the 1970s, and with it came the neo-liberal-spouting neo-cons, slashing regulations on corporations, aggressively pursuing "free trade" and reshaping Latin America to Milton Friedman's liking. The strategy worked politically for 25 years--even through Clinton--but the tide is turning again, and increasingly people worldwide are questioning a Washington Consensus based on commercial rather than civic values. Lou Dobbs' running CNN story on "Exporting America" reflects "ordinary Americans'" concern about the loss of both blue and white collar jobs, the hollowing out of the middle class and the increasing concentration of wealth.
What Dean has done is to recognize this nascent populism and by doing so, he has both rejected his party's inferiority complex and built a young base that will own the party for a generation to come. Dean may not win the primary, and the Democrats might not win in November, but by soliciting our generation's ownership of the Party and displaying prescience for the turning tide, Democrats will be riding the right wave.
Jared Fish is a Trinity sophomore his column appears every other Friday.
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