Mehlman to Quit, Howard Dean Vindicated

Karl Rove's political strategy finally unraveled. His protege, Ken Mehlman, is quitting his post as head of the Republican National Committee. John Aravois of Americablog caught the story on CNN:

CNN's John King just reported that Ken Mehlman will be leaving as chair of the Republican National Committee (i.e., head of the Republican party) by the end of the year. Apparently Kenny's just tuckered out.

Like Rove, Mehlman has been responsible for a lot of nonsense. He will not be missed.

Howard Dean, on the other hand, deserves considerable credit for a straight-forward strategy that was based on a 50-state plan of rebuilding the Democratic Party. I just browsed a couple of blog search engines and there are dozens of kudos for Dean; here's one from Steven D of Booman Tribune:

...we owe this victory in large part to DNC Chairperson Howard Dean and his 50 state strategy. If the politicians who opposed him most vehemently, Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer and the other members of the Democratic establishment in Congress had run the campaign they originally envisaged we would not have won by the significant margin that we did. Indeed, we might not even have won the House at all, and we certainly wouldn't have a shot at a majority in the Senate this morning. It was Howard Dean's vision of competing in every state, of asking every person for their vote, that proved to be the right one. Dean was right and the DCCC and DSCC leadership were wrong.

Thank you, Howard Dean. And thanks to all the hard working Democratic party volunteers and activists in every state that made his vision come true. Despite your naysayers and demonizers, this victory was realized because of your tireless efforts.

Enough can't be said about the volunteers. Terrell of Alone on the Limb is an example of the tireless volunteers who went all out: he made 572 calls for the election.

Here's a post from yesterday by Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake on Howard Dean offering credit back:

From Howard Dean's briefing at the National Press Club this morning:

Question: What role did the liberal blogosphere play?

Howard Dean:

That’s a growing influence on politics in general. There is also a conservative blogosphere, not only the liberal blogosphere, of course.

The netroots community can be very proud. They’re playing a bigger role.

Without the blogs, Jerry McInerny and Carole Shay (NH-1), would not have won. Entirely grassroots effort, without support form the Party, including us.

A big deal.

Here’s an even bigger deal. As you know, robocalls, flyers, low-ball election techniques. We knew about that instantly because of the blogs.

One of the best blogs for keeping track of Republican election games was Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo (see on the sidebar to the right). Hundreds, if not thousands of blogs were involved from all across the country. And many military veterans were blogging, including blogger and Donkey Path commenter S.W. Anderson of Oh!Pinion.

I don't know what the future of blogging holds, but with the frequent failure of the mainstream media to hold George W. Bush accountable, I hope Congress will do what it can to guarantee the reasonably unfettered freedom of the blogs to call things as they see them. As Dean pointed out, there are blogs on the right and blogs on the left and if people are committed to shining a bright light on government and politics, and engaging in a free exchange of ideas, blogging can be healthy for democracy. And healthy for the future of our country.