On Jan. 19, 2004 it seemed like the progressive wing of the Democratic Party had taken its last breath. To make things worse, it exhaled screaming, a scream heard in South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arizona and...you get the point.  I’m  referring to the famous “Dean Scream” speech, viewed as the depressing end to a storybook campaign that aimed to bring energy, courage and idealism back into democratic politics. The scream fueled the view of Dean as an inexperienced loose cannon, and allowed pundits to dismiss the campaign as an Internet generation sideshow unable to withstand real political adversity. The Dean experiment “failed” and John Kerry went into the general election trying to temper some of his more liberal statements, only to be easily beaten.

On Nov. 7, 2006, with the deafening sounds of that scream drowned out by news of war and corruption, the Democrats retook the majority in both the Senate and the House. Howard Dean was no longer a crazed partisan but a brilliant strategist. Had Dean matured? Had the progressive movement quieted its radical roots, moving away from frivolous concepts like “Internet organizing” and welcoming a more traditional organizing model? These are easy explanations, explanations that many of the pundits who initially scoffed at the Dean campaign embraced. However, they are completely false and they obscure a more difficult truth; the tools and values that came from a campaign deemed foolishly idealistic just two years ago gave Democrats their first major victory in some time.

What are these “tools and values” that between 2004 and 2006 transformed from idealistic fantasy to political savvy? The first is the idea that every voter is important. Howard Dean ran a primary campaign in New Hampshire while gathering grassroots support in many other states not traditionally important during primaries. Dean spoke in Washington, California and even Texas months before the election had officially heated up in those areas, and it paid off.

The Dean campaign routinely out-fundraised candidates with large networks of donors, partially because excitement about his campaign extended beyond Iowa and New Hampshire. 

In 2006 we saw the logical extension of that idea with “The Fifty State Strategy.” The DNC, under Dean, paid organizers in every state. The result: a resounding short term victory and long term groundwork for progressive politics in states generally considered Republican.

Another carry-over from the Dean campaign is the idea that political participation is more than wearing a button, putting up a yard sign or watching CNN. While critics like Robert Putnam talked about the breakdown of American social organizations, the Dean campaign facilitated well-attended “meet-ups” across the country. These meetings began to build a community that extended beyond electoral politics. From personal experience in Ohio, I would say that this community-based organizing model helped tremendously with recruitment for the 2006 campaign.

Finally, the Dean campaign’s storied use of the Internet laid the groundwork for an election cycle where every political blog fundraised for its favorite candidate and campaigns embraced new technology in the hopes of tapping the “youthful energy” of Dean’s failed candidacy. Candidates used blogs and vlogs and “netroots” celebrities for their campaigns, and the interactivity and accessibility of candidate websites allowed visitors to do more than read a dry biography.

All of the elements that combined to turn 2006 into a major Democratic victory can be traced back to a presidential campaign that the party thought would fade fast. This Feb. 15, Joe Trippi, the architect of the Dean campaign, will come to campus. No doubt much of his speech will sound as idealistic and audacious as the speech that preceded the famous scream. In light of the recent victory, however, that isn’t such a bad thing.