In 2006, the Fifty-State Strategy helped put Congress in the hands of Democrats. In 2008, it put the White House in our hands too. We worked hard; we listened to the boots on the ground, and America voted for Democrats — often in places once thought off limits to Democratic candidates.  Americans honored us with the opportunity to demonstrate our ability to lead.

In 2010, we face the reality that the culture of incumbency and corruption in Washington will not be changed just because Barack Obama was elected President, or just because the Democrats have majorities in both Houses.

You know the problems:

• A handful of Democrats openly siding with Republicans to kill health care reform — a core plank in the Democratic Party Platform — and then being rewarded for it.

• An activist right-wing on the Supreme Court that has shown the world that they are willing to blow-up over 200 years of institutional honor in the name of their own ideology.

• A GOP guided by a strategy of “no” that time and time again puts politics ahead of what’s good for America.

• And most importantly, the sense that too many candidates whom we have trusted and worked to elect have become part of the lobbying, money, legislative merry-go-round, instead of the solution that we thought they would be.

In the face of this frustration, in the face of low Democratic voter turnouts because people are fed up; in the face of friends and allies seemingly giving up; in the face of Democrats losing because they won’t stand up for the values of the Party; I think it’s time we took stock of ourselves, our considerable accomplishments, our opportunity to lead, and where we are going with our efforts to change our country.

If we stop for a minute, take a piece of paper and write down our values, for me, it’s simple:

• We value a healthcare system that covers all of us.

• We value a Democratic Party that fights for real change, in all 50 states, even when it’s hard.

• We value the ability to compromise without compromising our values.

• We value leaders who won’t quit, and who are willing to take risks. We appreciate leaders like Congresswoman Pingree and Congressman Polis who are still working for a public option.

• We value a good, strong American backbone.

Most of all, we value grassroots political activism because it is the citizens of our country who must seize control of our politics. Grassroots organizations like Democracy for America — the organization I founded in 2004 — have helped many progressives get elected to office and many more to take leadership positions in the Party and on legislative and electoral campaigns, all over the country and up and down the ballot, in just five years.

Later this year elections will be held across our country, and there is work being done that will decide the future direction of policies and politics at the local, state, and federal levels.

• Already, efforts are underway to reform the New York State Senate whose longtime incumbents are vulnerable because they could not govern.

• Many groups, including DFA are already working on critical local elections that will bring reformers into politics, such as this week’s election of Mariyana Spyopoulos to Cook Water Reclamation Board, a governing body with over a billion dollars of responsibility and overseer of Chicagolands most precious resource, Lake Michigan.

• And there will be opportunities to improve the Democratic Caucuses in both Houses in critical primary elections around the country that will be taking place in the coming months

This year the quality of the Caucuses must take precedent over the quantity of the Caucuses. We’ve got to pay attention to values, and we’ve got to elect leaders who implement their campaign platforms when they take office.

The Point:

This is not about whether we like the Party or not, it’s about getting good people into our political leadership. And there is still plenty of opportunity to make it happen.

Democracy for America is a great resource to get involved and find out more. There are also many local and national communities and campaigns to choose from.

The important thing is to choose a community or campaign that YOU want to work on because YOU have the power; and now is the time to use it.

 
This article was originally published on Daily Kos.

Former Governor Sarah Palin made some preposterous claims over the weekend which attracted mainstream media attention. She made up the term “death panel” and claimed that part of the health care reform bill now working it’s way through Congress required that families with children with disabilities, or elderly people who are infirm, could be judged by one of these death panels, which could control their fate and decide if they would die. GOP leadership repeated this outrageous claim across the airwaves on the Sunday morning talk shows. The mainstream media gave this claim credibility simply by repeating it.

My wife and I have practiced medicine for over forty years combined. There is no truth now, nor has there ever been any truth to the idea that the government encourages euthanasia or infanticide.

Our country is in trouble. Claims like these are routinely refuted by people who know better, but they are recirculated because they are sensational, and the MSM purports to take a balanced position without a thoughtful assessment of the facts. Fox News actually has people on in support of these outrageously false claims.

In fact, these kinds of claims are lies. There is no nice way to say it. This kind of stuff is far beyond the usual politicians’ tricks of shading words and imputing meanings that aren’t there. To quote a famous American who began the process of ending the McCarthy era in the fifties I address the MSM: “At long last, Have you no sense of decency?”

 
This article was originally published on The Huffington Post.

I was born in New York City. I can remember riding double-decker buses on top for a nickel, and when the Third Avenue subway through Yorkville was an elevated train.

I had my first real job in New York (Wall Street), I worked in my first political campaign in New York, Ed Koch’s first (unsuccessful) run for Mayor. I went to Medical School in New York, I have been on the ballot in New York. I met my wife in New York.

I now live in Vermont, and I have been here for 31 years. Twelve of those years I served as Governor, but my more vehement political opponents always called me a New Yorker when they were particularly frustrated with some of my deeds.

When I was a medical student at Albert Einstein I worked in the public hospital system in the Bronx. Seeing a nine year old a with gun shot wounds in the Emergency Room sharpened my sense of social justice. Long lines of people waiting in the ER because they had no where else they could go for medical help formed my core belief that our healthcare system needs real reform, not a re-shuffling of the status quo for political reasons. Going on Ambulance calls in the South Bronx made me respect the efforts of the poor and of immigrants. We would weave in and out of the pillars supporting the El with sirens blaring and climb the dingy dangerous stairs of a tenement house to find families in distress in neat, well-kept (although frayed) apartments.

I learned the code of the streets, being stopped in bad neighborhoods by toughs demanding money, only to have one of them step from the shadows and defend me.

Tom Manton of Queens, who was the leader of the last political machine in America outside Chicago, showed me the secret to his success. He was inclusive of every new group of people who moved into his borough, the melting pot of melting pots in America. It wasn’t enough to have (by invitation) African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, and Asian Americans. He had two or three kinds of everything: Orthodox, Hasidic and Reform Jews; Caribbeans, Brazilians and Americans; Dominican, Colombian and Puerto Ricans; Muslims, Catholics, Protestants and Buddhists; Korean, Indian and Chinese Americans. Everyone was heard, but in the end, they pulled together as one team. His example informed my belief that the Democratic Party had to end the hangover of interest group politics left over from the sixties and seventies, and that showing up everywhere and talking to people everywhere is a sign of respect.

Frank Sinatra had it right. It’s a heck of a town.

Howard Dean was formerly the Chairman of the Democratic Party. The former Governor is also the author of Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform.

This article was originally published on the Huffington Post.