The Dems are frustrated with Chairman Dean's first 100 days. USA Today:
National party chairmen Howard Dean and Ken Mehlman have the same job titles but different jobs. One is on a mission to rebuild, the other to expand. ...
Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is courting black and Hispanic voters on a regular basis. ...[He] has visited Latino neighborhoods and historically black campuses[,] attended black-oriented receptions and ceremonies, spoken to minority chambers of commerce and raised money for Otto Banks of Harrisburg, Pa., a black city council candidate new to the GOP.
Dean, who reaches Day 100 as Democratic National Committee chairman Monday, is for the most part speaking to diehard Democrats who are the backbone of their party. He's addressed Democrats in nine states dominated by Republicans, such as Kansas and Mississippi, and in party strongholds such as California and Massachusetts. He's spoken to labor unions, gay-rights groups and state party chairs — all pillars of the party.
Some Democrats are frustrated by the contrast between the two approaches, even as they praise Dean's efforts to revitalize flagging state parties. "Democrats should be stirring things up, roiling the waters on (the GOP) side the way Mehlman is on ours. He's playing in our sandbox," says Steve Rosenthal, CEO of America Coming Together, a group formed to energize and turn out Democratic voters. ...
Rosenthal, Marshall and others say Democrats — led by Dean — should be reaching out to groups and areas where Republicans have done well: military families, Catholics, evangelical Christians, business leaders, people who live in the "exurbs" beyond even outer suburbs, and people who live in small, "micropolitan" cities. They also say Democrats should focus on black and Latino voters, even though majorities of both voted for Democrat John Kerry for president last year. ...
Dean is offering Democrats his trademark red-meat rhetoric along with guidance on outreach. In speeches covered locally, he has called Republicans "corrupt," "brain-dead" and "mean." "They are not nice people," he said last month in a radio interview on Air America Minnesota, according to the political newsletter Hotline. Last weekend he said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, whose associates are under investigation but who has not been charged with anything, should go home to Houston to "serve his jail sentence" at Texas expense.
At the same time, Dean tells Democrats they need to "respect people in all 50 states" and try to win them over. "We need to talk to people from our hearts," he told California Democrats. He said Democrats should "say what our values are" and "inform Americans about what we believe instead of letting the other party do it."
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