Howard Dean's future at the DNC

There is suddenly much discussion about Howard Dean. About the insults he has regularly been hurling at Republicans:

• "I hate Republicans and everything they stand for."
• "The struggle between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is a struggle between good and evil — and we're the good."
• Republicans are "brain-dead" (spoken about 10 days before Terri Schiavo died)
  
• "Let's face it, [Republicans] have never made an honest living in their lives."
• "Republicans don't represent ordinary Americans, and they don't have any understanding of what it is to go out and try and make ends meet."
• "The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people. They are a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party."

The repudiations from the left are interesting. Here's Barney Frank, referring to Dean's comment that Tom DeLay should "go back to Houston where he can serve his jail sentence" despite the fact that DeLay hasn't been indicted on anything, much less convicted:

I think Howard Dean was out of line talking about DeLay. The man has not been indicted. I don’t like him, I disagree with some of what he does, but I don’t think you, in a political speech, talk about a man as a criminal or his jail sentence.

From John Edwards, who later backed away from this comment:

The chairman of the DNC is not the spokesman for the party. He’s a voice. I don’t agree with it.

From Sen. Joe Biden, who’s been known to be a flame-thrower at times:

He doesn’t speak for me with that kind of rhetoric and I don’t think he speaks for the majority of Democrats.

From Nancy Pelosi, on the "white Christians" comment:

I don't think that the statement the governor made was a helpful statement.

And the self-doubt, while difficult to find, has started among the left at large. This from billmon.org, making a baseball analogy:

Unfortunately — or maybe fortunately, considering the team — the Democratic Party doesn't have a manager with the power to decide whether to yank Howard Dean out of the game. I don't even know how the party would go about firing a DNC chairman, but I imagine it's a pretty painful process. Still, the question still has to be asked: Is it time for the Dems to get something going in the bullpen? As much as I hate to say it, unless Dean can settle down and get off his gaffe-a-day treadmill, maybe it would be best if he hit the showers.

And all this doesn't even count the fact that the current financial picture for the Democrats is not pretty, despite Dean's supposed expertise in bringing in new donors. According to Business Week, the DNC raised $14.1 million in the first quarter of 2005, vs. the Republican National Committee’s $32.3 million. Dean drew about 20,000 new donors, while his rivals picked up 68,200. Republicans have $26.2 million in the bank vs. $7.2 million for the Dems.

On Wednesday, Radio Host Laura Ingraham was taking over-under on the time Dean has left as head of the DNC (six months to a year was the consensus); a poll on her website was evenly split today on whether Dean will survive until the 2006 elections. Others on the right half of the political aisle are speculating about how the (non-MoveOn.org) Democrats really feel about having Dean as the mouthpiece of the party.

But most of the left-wing traffic on the left has this flavor: To all you Democrats who are criticizing Howard Dean, what the *&$#@ are you doing?! We don't criticize our own! You're playing right into the Republicans' hands!

The Democrats nominated Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry (Dean came close) in 2004, and the loudest Democrat voices in America (Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, etc.) are funded by George Soros. Combine that with the fact that other Democrats are invoking (what I think is) a Ronald Reagan rule of politics — don't beat up your own — rather than wondering how America's swing voters might interpret Howard Dean's verbal grenades, and there's no way the Democrats are going to throw Howard Dean under the bus.

My prediction: Howard Dean will last at least until the 2006 elections. Unless the Democrats suffer another blowout in '06, Dean will stay as chairman through the next presidential election.