Burnt Orange Report

Andrew - I agree with most of what you say, but I think you had the Frost / Fowler thing backwards. Not in the sense that I support Fowler. He's probably my third choice after Rosenberg and Frost. I saw Fowler on TV yesterday on C-SPAN's coverage of the Atlanta meeting, and I was less than impressed with his presentation. He almost seemed over his head.

On the other hand, everyone says that Fowler is a great strategist, knows the grassroots and probably understands the internal mechanisms of the DNC better than anyone. I think he'd be a great behind the scenes executive director type, whereas Frost I think is better suited to be the front man. Frost is a great speaker who is able to stay on message and get his points across quickly and coherently. He's also a great fundraiser, and ran the DCCC effectively.

I watched part of the presentation on C-SPAN as well. I really only managed to catch the closing statements and the person who impressed me the most was Fowler. I'm still behind Dean, though, just because I know he understands the netroots as well as anyone. Frost just doesn't really inspire me, though I know he was terrific as DCCC chair and that he's really helped out the state party.

I think we can all agree that Tim Roemer sucks. While everyone else on the dais talked about Democrats using "we", Roemer put a lot of emphasis on "I". He just repeated the word values over and over again, as if we were hamsters and saying the right word will make us step on the pedal and release a food pellet.

There's something very cynical in the way he did that that just proves that the inside the beltway types can't even craft a decent message to get elected to an office inside their own party.

We need somebody that is the opposite of Roemer, someone committed to reform and that person in my mind is Howard Dean. Donnie Fowler is a good choice, as is Frost for fund-raising and party activities, but they are not the outsiders that some of us want... and Rosenberg seems to have almost fallen off my radar. If anything, Roemer is just there to remind us what happens if we don't get serious about taking back our party.

Not to be Roemer's biggest defender (as I'm dealing with the two lowest ranking DNC candidates on my own list), but there's a few things about this summary that bother me ...

I'm curious why in Martin Frost's case, the most important thing isn't ideology, but in Tim Roemer's case, it sure seems to be. The issue of Roemer's retirement is a bit misstated as well ... Indiana was facing reapportionment under GOP control and with one less seat ... Roemer's South Bend-based district was target #1. Does this mean that Texas Rep. Jim Turner is similarly on the outs for you? I mean, it's not like Roemer was on the Rules Committee where he could extort his fellow partisans to chip into his campaign and put together fundraisers for them if they wanted any favors done.

But then again ... Martin Frost is "the consumate pro." Maybe ... just maybe ... that's part and parcel of the problem.

Thanks for the post Andrew! I was flying about today and knew I was going to miss the meeting so I'm glad you have some info. It may very well be that any resolution that Mr. Soechting was thinking about just got pulled off the table before it got put on it. I'll try to contact a few of my sources again and if I have anything new to add, I'll throw up a post. It's not that I think Frost is a bad guy, he was a good Congressman for Texas and I'm sure Texas would benefit, but I'm looking at all 50 states. But I agree, Roemer, ew.

Greg,

I'm pretty sure that Democrats controlled the redistricting process in Indiana. Democrats paired two Republicans, made Hostetler's 8th district a little bit more Democratic, and did their best to make Baron Hill, Julia Carson and Tim Roemer's districts as Democratic as possible. Roemer declined to run for re-election in a district that was more Democratic if anything than the district which he previously represented. At least that was my understanding.

I think the key differnce between Roemer and Frost in my book is that Martin Frost is clearly a national Democrat on all major issues whereas Roemer deviates from most Democrats on several key issues.

I'm really torn over who to support for DNC Chairman. My Texas pride and desire for our state to be something else other than "Daddy's credit card," (excellent analogy, by the way) wants me to support a Texan, in particular Frost.

But, I also want to see the party get off 'high center'--both philosophically (sp?) and in general. In this sense, I think we need some new blood, and I'm not sure Frost, in spite of his awesome credentials and power to rake in the cash, is that person.

The Chairman has almost no power in setting policy or defining ideology for the party. When we had an ultra liberal chairman- Ron Brown- we elected a moderate President. Other examples abound. Ideology isn't so important, IMHO. That's why I can't understand why anybody supports Dean for this race- all of his creative campaign stuff was the work of Joe Trippi, not Howard Dean. If Trippi wants the job, God bless him, but he doesn't so the only reason to support Dean is because of his policies- policies that a solid majority of Americans oppose.

As I can see it only two candidates are making ideology a part of their campaign- Roemer and Dean- and both are bad choices. Roemer because he's more of the same and Dean because he has no qualification to run. Frost is best for Texas and has shown a keen ability to kick ass in all 50 states. He is easily the most qualified, most intelligent, most proven of all the candidates and he deserves our support.