Howard Dean is Our Chair

Howard Dean was elected today to serve as the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.  The following is his plan to reinvigerate the Democratic Party and make it the majority party in the United States.  He brings with him skills and a background that has helped him to reinvent grassroots camapining in this country.  We can only hope that he is successful in his efforts over the next 4 years as our Chairman. 

As the 49th Ward Committeeman I pledge to work with Howard Dean and to support his efforts.  I believe that his second point, rebuilding state Democratic Parties is vital and his view of working to expand local parties by working with neighborhood activists is something we have done and will redouble our efforts as we go forward.  Of course not everyone is happy with Dean, or with me, but if building the party is what is important to you its time to start on the 2008 election.

Chairman Howard Dean's DNC Plan

1. Show up! Democrats should never concede a single state, a single district, or a single voter to the Republicans. We must be active and compete in all 50 states and work with the state parties to build a true national party.

2. The success of the national party depends directly on the success of the state parties — we must better integrate our operations by:
Having the DNC pay the salary of each state party executive director to help ensure that the state parties have adequate funds.
Collectively building and sharing supporter lists between the national and state parties.
Recruiting, training, and encouraging candidates to run for office at every level — building tomorrow's farm team from the ground up.
Actively grow local Democratic committees and communities by working with neighborhood activists who can reach out in their communities and enable the grassroots to support state and local candidates.
Maintaining a permanent campaign in every state. We need to establish an ongoing, active presence, which does not have to be recreated every four years for four months.

3. Set core principles that define the Democratic Party and what we stand for and take a bottom-up approach to the development of the Party's message;

4. Use cutting-edge Internet and other technologies to fundraise, organize, and communicate with our supporters;

5. Strengthen our political institutions and leadership institutes to promote our leaders and our ideas — these organizations must work together in a coordinated and integrated fashion to elect Democrats at every level, so that we can take this country back.