"Yes, he's in trouble, in that campaign managers, candidates, are really angry with him. He has raised $74 million and spent $64 million. He says it's a long-term strategy. But what he has spent it on, apparently, is just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose. That's not how you build a party. You win elections. That's how you build a party."
- Paul Begala on Howard Dean and the DNC's 50 State Strategy,
CNN - May 11 2006

Yes, Paul, we have to win elections. But a myopic obsession with squeaking through in a few high-profile races is not party building, it's suicide.

I've read your books and I know you've been fighting the good fight up there on TV every day. And so it was with complete dismay that I listened to you on CNN savaging the DNC's "50 State" program organizers.

Your comments came as part of a series of attacks on Dean and the DNC from big-name members of your Clinton Class of '92. A whole generation of new Democratic activists finds these attacks totally bewildering and appalling.

You should be up there on TV celebrating that we finally have a DNC who understands that winning means building real power and standing for something. Your entire career has been about teaching Democrats to "stand for something." But, coming from a communications background, maybe you just don't understand the "building real power" part of the equation.

When Democratic Chairman Howard Dean sent Idaho Democrats the money to double the size of the state party’s tiny staff, it seemed a vainglorious gesture. Silly. Stupid, even. Few states are as Republican Red as Idaho.

Dean’s critics, and there are many here, call his “50-state strategy” to direct a chunk of the party’s treasury to states that don’t routinely elect Democrats a colossal waste of resources.

Rahm Emanuel, the debonair Chicagoan who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, threw a well-publicized tantrum over Dean’s insistence on nurturing Democratic grassroots in backwoods places like Idaho.

Emanuel’s buddy, Democratic consultant Paul Begala — who once knew a little something and cared a bit about folks who live outside the Washington Beltway — said contemptuously on CNN that Dean was wasting precious money “hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose.”

I am deeply frustrated with a party establishment that does everything except tell people what we stand for. They spend millions on voter files, field work, phone banks, staff, consultants, etc...and yet people don't know what we stand for. I am not opposed to hiring organizers. I'm opposed to pretending that hiring organizers is in any way a substitute for having a message.