Fueling Donkey
By Joseph Ward III
Howard Dean, former US presidential candidate and founder of the “Democracy for America” political action committee, spoke to George Washington University students about the future of the Democratic Party last December. His forty-five minute speech in the Jack Morton Auditorium. Attracted 150 Students, Deaniacs, press, officials, and distinguished guest. Insistant that the Republican party treated the 2004 presidential elections like it was a mandate, Dean reiterated the fact that Democrats ”allowed them to get away with it.” “Our challenge today is not to rehash what has happened, but to look forward, to make the Democratic Party a 50-state party again, and, most importantly to win,” Dean said. 
Dean laid out the foundation of the Democratic Party’s future focusing on the importance of reaching out to local campaign contributors as well as having heavy involvement in grassroots campaigning to get more Democrats elected to local offices. Dean also questioned Democrats by saying, “At what point did it become a radical notion to stand up for what we believe? Let me tell you something: there’s only one thing Republican power brokers want more than for Dems to lurch to the left, and that’s for us to lurch to the right.” The challenges of the democratic party to uphold and persevere in its struggle to be fiscally responsible and socially progressive are ideas that Dean feels Democrats must begin to consistently fight for. “What they fear most is that we may really begin fighting for what we believe, the fiscal responsible, socially progressive values for wich Democrats have always stood and fought,” Dean said. After his speech Dean was confronted by reporters and hundreds of anxious students. Dean took pictures, signed t-shirts, GWORLD cards and various other possessions wile answering questions from the press and students.