Looks like soon-to-be president Barack Obama isn't going to show the love for former Vt. Gov. Howard Dean and all his good-soldier efforts the past four years as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Politico is reporting today that Obama chose to visit DNC headquarters Thursday for a joint press conference with Dean's DNC replacement, Gov. Tim Kaine, on a day that Dean happened to be in American Samoa, about 7,000 miles away from Washington D.C., fulfilling a promise to visit every state and U.S. territory as DNC chairman.
Dean loyalists are quoted as not being happy about the slight, not at all.
"The snub today was no accident," one unnamed Dean all is quoted as saying in the Politico piece. “I guarantee you he would have rescheduled his trip if asked to attend. It’s easy to [screw] over people when you are riding high in the polls, let's see how many people are singing his praises in six months."
Dean's brother, Jim, who heads the Democracy for America grassroots organizating group and PAC that was born out of Dean's failed 2004 presidential campaign, said he was sore about what was going on, too.
“If he had been asked to go to that event, he would have been there,” Jim Dean said. To read the piece in its entirety, click
HERE.
Jim Dean's comment explains what had previously been sort of a mystery to me, a recent DFA call for supporters to contact the DNC and urge them to "immediately reinstate" Howard's vaunted 50-state strategy. The appeal initially struck me as odd considering no one including Obama has said the strategy was being abandoned. Now I get it.
Howard Dean's official take on all this appears to be that he's not bummed out that he may not be part of the Obama administration.
"I`m very happy that Barack Obama is president, and I think he`s picked a great cabinet. And I`m pretty happy," Dean told Hardball's Chris Matthews recently. "I wouldn`t trade my position for any other position right now. I`m going to go into the private sector, make a living making speeches, and do a lot of stuff on health care policy."
I can believe that, sort of, because I saw how quickly he got over his own demise as a presidential candidate four years ago. Few people could have bounced back as fast as he did after the humiliation of watching his presidential dreams crash and burn so suddenly and so viciously.
But don't think for a minute that part of him is still waiting for a call from Barack.
After I wrote a Buzz piece earlier this week about him not getting the Surgeon General nod, someone at the DNC took time to call and make sure I understood Dean didn't feel like he was "passed over" for the post because he wasn't hoping to be the SG anyway.
Why make a call like that if your guy isn't still hoping to land a job with Team Obama?
-- Sam Hemingway
