Bye Bye Doctor Dean

Now that President Elect Obama has moved the DNC to Chicago, it was only a matter of time before Dean vacated the DNC chair.  Dean had made it clear that he was going to be a one-timer but something tells me if asked, he would have stayed on for awhile.  Is he leaving while he’s on top or getting out while the getting is good?

Left blogosphere is full of the usual speculation as to who will take the helm.  The money appears to be on a co-chair, share the wealth arrangement.  Senator Claire MacCaskill will symbolically front the party apparatchik while the real work will be done by Obama Insider Steve Hildebrand.  The question that remains is what of the 50 state strategy that has been the hallmark of 4 years of Dean rule?  Future chief of state Rahm Emmanuel was highly critical of the strategy.

Folks attending Netroots nation were treated to the Hildebrand “Manifesto.”  Hildebrand was responsible for the massive voter registration and blog outpouring for the Obama Campaign.   Hildrebrand refers to himself as a McGovern Liberal who looks to a larger audience to accomplish his goals.  Here is an interview he gave as reported by the New York Observer.

“A fundamental organizing principle for us in these 54 events we’ve been involved in is that we need our paid organizers to organize,” said Hildebrand. “And the way I’ve done it for years and … the way we did it in Iowa and for the most part New Hampshire is we had organizers as robots.”

He meant that they got instructions to knock on doors or make calls and they did just that. But the campaign has suggested that a more sophisticated field operation strategy would now be used, which in part included teams of well-trained volunteers getting call lists and names of targeted voters in their neighborhood right off the campaign’s Web site.

“We brought about 30 folks in from the states in about May to have a long brainstorm session about what worked what didn’t. What’s applicable to the general?” said Hildebrand. “And they went forward and did 200 interviewers with organizers to give a sense about how we do this. And a whole bunch of them went into a room for about three weeks and wrote the field model for the general. And the one that we all have agreed to is these field teams. Because volunteers are willing to give us more time, and because they are willing to take real responsibility, not just do a couple hours of phone calls.”

Hildebrande was responsible for the large ground game seen as essential to the Obama win. A larger question looms, however.  How will the DNC morph as Obama continues to put Chicago style politics in to the DNC?  Will we continue to see DNC money pour into local groups that will be organized to keep every one in line? Will we see nationwide precinct captains reporting back to the top as they slash and burn local powerbrokers?  How will DNC resources be used and who of these local organizers will be paid by the Obama campaign as compared to who is on the DNC payroll.?

I know that many Pumas have completely given up on party affiliation, but this reformation will impact what ever steps we choose moving forward.  What have we learned from this election season and what more shennigans can we expect from the DNC moving forward?