Dean on 60 (Senators) and 50 (State Strategy)

On a day when many Senate Democrats, by failing to sanction Joe Lieberman, gave a big ‘FU’ to the party activists and netroots who spilt blood, sweat, tears and dollars during the 2008 election cycle, it was heartening to see one senior Democratic politician show them a little of the respect they deserved. Howard Dean gave several phone interviews to bloggers and new media journalists, answering their questions in an honest, open and informative way; or rather as best as he could considering his role was still to defend the indefensible.  Read the full interview and comments here, or Nate’s summary here.

Howard Dean is of course the architect of the 50 State Strategy, so it wasn’t a surprise to see the conversation turn eventually from Lieberman to this.  Nate reports Dean as saying:

 ”The 50-state strategy is really an empowerment philosophy more than anything else. You can’t empower people in Utah or in Texas if you don’t show up there. Whatever I’m going to do next is based on empowerment and the 50-state strategy is an empowerment strategy.” Dean suggested that states such as Georgia and Texas might be attractive targets for Democrats at the presidential level in 2012. At the same time, Dean said, governance in a majority requires a different timbre than party-building.