This is one in a series of weekly syndicated columns written by Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.

The Democrats took a beating last week, at least at the Federal level. But while the re-election of the President may be a setback on many levels, especially from the point of view of fiscal conservatives like me; the Democratic Party is not in the middle of a catastrophe.

First, at the local grassroots level, Democrats fared better than the Republicans. We picked up two state legislatures, and a number of other offices, we had some near misses in a states where candidates who had never run before did very well, thus helping to build a strong bench for 2006.

While President Bush's campaign did a flawless job getting out their vote, and preparing ahead of time by putting anti-gay marriage amendments on the ballot in key states, the Democrats also did very well, building a record turnout. The surge in young voters, who overwhelmingly voted for John Kerry, is a good sign for the future.

Having said all this, the Democratic Party needs an overhaul. We will never win by trying to be "Republican-lite".

The Republican Party consistently undermines the American middle class, makes it tougher to get health insurance, makes college education less affordable, and runs up large deficits, while giving enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars to the biggest corporations in the world.

Two weeks before the election, the Bush administration passed a bill that was supported by too many Democrats, giving $139 billion away. The argument was that we couldn't win if we didn't support this legislation, which had lots of goodies for everyone. Well, the bill passed, and we lost anyway.

If you want to win, you have to fight, and you have to stand for something. I disagree with President Bush on almost every direction he takes us in, but he is a disciplined campaigner with an easy to understand message.

I think Democrats have a better message. First, we are fiscally responsible, and deficits hurt America. There is nothing moral about passing on our debts to our children. You cannot trust Republicans with your money. This week another increase in the debt ceiling is to be voted on, the Democrats need to stand fast for fiscal responsibility.

The President successfully turned a discussion about moral values into a discussion about gay marriage and abortion. I think moral values are also about how you treat poor people, how you treat those who are different, how you respect the opinion of others, and what you leave to your children. On those moral values, I think the Republicans lose. We need to talk about these values too.

Finally, we should also continue to do what I think the Kerry/Edwards team did well. Every American needs a job, every American needs affordable health care, every American needs a decent public education system, and every American wants a foreign policy consistent with the vision of American moral leadership, so we can be the moral leader, not just the military leader of the world.

Dan Trevas, Ohio Democratic Party Communications Director
t r u t h o u t | Statement

Tuesday 09 November 2004

The Ohio Democratic Party shares Sen. John Kerry's insistence that every vote be counted. Here is where we stand in Ohio:

After the Unofficial Results reported Nov. 2 - George Bush leads John Kerry by 136,483 votes.

PROVISIONAL BALLOTS WILL BE COUNTED.

155,000 provisional ballots have been cast and not yet been counted.

County Boards of Elections have until Friday to verify the eligibility of those who cast a provisional vote. Counting will begin, Saturday, November 13. County Boards have until Dec. 1, 2004 to certify their vote totals and report them to the Secretary of State.

Two Democrats and two Republicans sit on each County Board of Elections.

Tabulations of the votes will be done in a bi-partisan manner. Only if there is a tie vote on the board does the decision go to the Secretary of State.

OVERSEAS ABSENTEE BALLOTS HAVE NOT BEEN COUNTED.

Overseas Absentee ballots by civilians may have been received by County Boards of Elections by Nov. 2 that have not yet been counted. The Boards of Elections will count those votes.

Overseas absentee ballots by military have until, Friday, Nov. 12 to arrive and be counted by the Boards of Elections in the final total.

93,000 PUNCH CARDS WERE CAST, BUT A VOTE FOR PRESIDENT WAS NOT COUNTED.

The votes were not counted either because the voter voted for more than one candidate or did not vote for a presidential candidate. These ballots will be reexamined if there is a recount.

Ohio has a uniform, statewide system for recounting punch card ballots. Hanging chads and dimpled chads are treated uniformly throughout the state.

EXAMINATION FOR ERRORS GOING ON IN ALL 88 OHIO COUNTIES.

A Vote Error on Election night gave George Bush 3,893 more votes in a Franklin County precinct than actually cast for him. That error was found by comparing the unofficial abstract of votes casts by precinct to votes for each candidate. Officials in all 88 counties have been contacted and requested to review for a similar error.

NO OHIO COUNTY USED DIEBOLD ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES.

Ohio did not use modern electronic voting machines in this election. Six counties use an older form of electronic voting, which has a means of verifying the accuracy of the vote. In 69 Ohio Counties, punch card ballots were used.

RECOUNT

In Ohio a recount is automatic for statewide election if difference in the vote is within 0.25% of the total votes cast.

For a recount is the presidential race, this is probably about a 19,000-vote margin between Kerry and Bush.

Only a losing candidate can request a recount. A recount may always be requested regardless of the closeness of the race. The recount is requested by the losing candidate. The request for a recount must be made within 5 days of the official announcement of the results by the Secretary of State.

The fee for a recount is set by each Board of Elections and may be between $5 and $10 per precinct. You can limit the recount to specific precincts. The cost is deposited by the person making the recount request at the time of the application based on the number of precincts requested to be recounted. The entire recount and contest procedures are outlined at ORC 3515.

VOTE FRAUD OR MISTAKES

Information about fraud or mistake can be reported the Ohio Democratic Party.

You can leave a message at x134 or email . This information will be shared with our legal counsel as the official election tabulations are being made.

You may also share any concerns about voter fraud or mistakes the Secretary of State by emailing: .

This was my way of taking action in our new four years of misery.

The Draft Dean for President in '08 petition

Edward L. Lachowicz
Democratic Party Town Chair
Pittston, Maine

It has been a sad time for all of us especially people like you that worked so hard. I'm sending the article in case you didn't see it.

Warms regards,

Millie

Ms. C.M. LaRuffa
Bronx NY
______________________

The Red Zone
By MAUREEN DOWD
November 4, 2004

WASHINGTON

With the Democratic Party splattered at his feet in little blue puddles, John Kerry told the crushed crowd at Faneuil Hall in Boston about his concession call to President Bush.

"We had a good conversation," the senator said. "And we talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity, for finding the common ground, coming together. Today I hope that we can begin the healing."

Democrat: Heal thyself.

W. doesn't see division as a danger. He sees it as a wingman.

The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel.

W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or "values voters," as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.

Mr. Bush, whose administration drummed up fake evidence to trick us into war with Iraq, sticking our troops in an immoral position with no exit strategy, won on "moral issues."

The president says he's "humbled" and wants to reach out to the whole country. What humbug. The Bushes are always gracious until they don't get their way. If W. didn't reach out after the last election, which he barely grabbed, why would he reach out now that he has what Dick Cheney calls a "broad, nationwide victory"?

While Mr. Bush was making his little speech about reaching out, Republicans said they had "the green light" to pursue their conservative agenda, like drilling in Alaska's wilderness and rewriting the tax code.

"He'll be a lot more aggressive in Iraq now," one Bush insider predicts. "He'll raze Falluja if he has to. He feels that the election results endorsed his version of the war." Never mind that the more insurgents American troops kill, the more they create.

Just listen to Dick (Oh, lordy, is this cuckoo clock still vice president?) Cheney, introducing the Man for his victory speech: "This has been a consequential presidency which has revitalized our economy and reasserted a confident American role in the world." Well, it has revitalized the Halliburton segment of the economy, anyhow. And "confident" is not the first word that comes to mind for the foreign policy of a country that has alienated everyone except Fiji.

Vice continued, "Now we move forward to serve and to guard the country we love." Only Dick Cheney can make "to serve and to guard" sound like "to rape and to pillage."

He's creating the sort of "democracy" he likes. One party controls all power in the country. One network serves as state TV. One nation dominates the world as a hyperpower. One firm controls contracts in Iraq.

Just as Zell Miller was so over the top at the G.O.P. convention that he made Mr. Cheney seem reasonable, so several new members of Congress will make W. seem moderate.

Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and warned that "the gay agenda" would undermine the country. He also characterized his race as a choice between "good and evil" and said he had heard there was "rampant lesbianism" in Oklahoma schools.

Jim DeMint, the new senator from South Carolina, said during his campaign that he supported a state G.O.P. platform plank banning gays from teaching in public schools. He explained, "I would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend should be hired to teach my third-grade children."

John Thune, who toppled Tom Daschle, is an anti-abortion Christian conservative - or "servant leader," as he was hailed in a campaign ad - who supports constitutional amendments banning flag burning and gay marriage.

Seeing the exit polls, the Democrats immediately started talking about values and religion. Their sudden passion for wooing Southern white Christian soldiers may put a crimp in Hillary's 2008 campaign (nothing but a wooden stake would stop it). Meanwhile, the blue puddle is comforting itself with the expectation that this loony bunch will fatally overreach, just as Newt Gingrich did in the 90's.

But with this crowd, it's hard to imagine what would constitute overreaching.

Invading France?

Dear Howard,

Here is what I sent back to John Kerry after receiving an e-mail thank-you from him. I hope it rings true with you, too, and all of your organization who worked so hard for the goal we almost achieved this time. Let's all continue to stay focussed on the main point: so much power to do good (or evil) eminates from the Presidency and Congress of the United States. No matter what our specific causes and agendas may be, we must all remain focussed and united in taking back Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008 as the necessary foundation for all our other goals and causes--otherwise we will all continue to struggle to swim upstream against a torrent of reactionary, neoconservative turbulence financed by our own tax money!

Thanks and best regards,

Dr. Dennis Nagy
Chapel Hill, NC
______________________

Dear Senator Kerry,

Thank you for your tremendous effort!

It became clear to me during the campaign that we all had our work cut out for us regardless of who won this election. This loss is just a (hopefully temporary) setback in a multi-year, multi-decade effort to both move America positively forward as well as return to our core values: tolerance, positive leadership, intelligent dialog, true compassion--none of which are shown by the Bush Administration.

The Democratic Party needs very strong leadership and focus right now to wage a continuing effort to win back the White House 4 years from now and the Congress two years from now--please don't "fade from the scene" like other defeated Democratic Presidential candidates after past elections. You have not in any way failed the Democratic Party--we just all did not (yet) do enough to get people thinking about and feeling stronger about what really matters in their lives.The Democratic Party doesn't need any major overhaul or repositioning--just more focus, fine-tuning, and drive to capture a few more percentage points in 2 years, 4 years,... Please do everything you can to sustain, on an ongoing basis, the great momentum created during this campaign.

Dr. Dennis A. Nagy
Chapel Hill, NC

Dear Howard,

Thank you for your words, and for all you do. It's hard for some of us older folks not to wonder whether we can, indeed, survive another W administration!

Nevertheless, four of us held Meetup last night; the other three were all younger than I. One was Katie, the local 21st-Century Democrats organizer who has shared my house since Labor Day.

We did our job in Minnesota. We carried the state for Kerry; Katie and her volunteers targeted ten precincts in Republican Stearns County, MN, and carried all of them. Moreover, our Dean team worked especially hard in the Take Back the House campaign to recover control of the Minnesota House of Representatives. We needed 15 victories, and we got 13.

The Republicans have to work with a 2-seat majority, and a DFL-controlled Senate(which was not up for re-election this year). (For those who don't know, the party in Minnesota is Democratic-Farmer-Labor, or DFL.)

And one part at least of the silver lining is that we have an unlimited right to kvetch against the government, to track their doings, and to organize for 2006!

Blessings,

Linda Maloney+
Minnesota

Hello,

Yes, we have lost our ingenious system of checks and balances. We have failed our forefathers. They this time would come when the giants would arise and beat their chests and cause the earth and people everywhere to cry out in desolation and fear.

We are the ones who have the ears to hear their cries and who cry within our own beings at the desolations going on now and the desolations to come. There is no use for us to be fodder for their tortures and their prisons. This is the time to dance and to sing, to write poetry and music and to draw and to paint and to sculpt -- to the glory of life on earth.

The one thing I noticed during the campaign about the Pugs is their joylessness. They never sing. They never dance. They never praise God for the beauty and the bounty of our earth. This we can do. this we must do. this we need to do. This is our time to surrender every thought, to turn inward to the place where life or creativity reside and release into the world -- set free -- manifest -- the "voice" whatever it may be in each one of us --that speaks to us from within.

The grass can never be stopped from growing. No matter how many times it is trodden down or cut it never throws up its hands crying, "What's the use!" We must laugh. We must dance. we must sing. We must bring joy into the lives of our children. Joy and love of our beautiful earth, of one another -- This is peace. To live like that is peace. Peace is not absence or inactivity. Peace is alive and ready to live, to enter the world through us.

I am not talking "Pollyanna" here. I am not talking about pretending everything is as it was before. It is manifestly not.

This is the time when new songs are going to be written and to be sung -- songs that address the times we live in and lift us up. What I am talking about here is this: the current situation in the world today is that we must raise our own consciousness. Then and only when we have raised our own consciousnesses can we reach out to others all across the world, all those in other nations who had hoped for us in this election, who had prayed for us, who had counted on us. We are still here. We need only to change our course a little.

We no longer will have the public forum that our candidates could bring to us. We have long since lost the media. But we still have the newspapers. We can still write letters to the editor. We have Air America Radio. We need more liberal networks. We need liberal TV. I sense that we have Dan Rather -- CBS. His was the only channel and I count OUT PBS. I watched Lehrer and Margaret Warner and Brooks giddy with glee and filled with their inside jokes at our expense, the expense of our just cause, on election night. Mark Shields has become a ghost. He needs reviving.

It's a time to sing and write poetry and paint and draw and compose music and tell our great story of our love of our earth and of life to the world. We can raise our own consciousnesses that way and through ourselves the consciousness of the human race. It has been said that the dogs are becoming human and people are becoming wolves.

I'm not talking about opting out of our cause this way. I'm looking for a way that speaks to everyone, a way that is rising within me. I'm talking about Living this new way, every day. I'm talking about not taking those who are bent upon destroying us directly, not even with reasoning with them. That time is past. I'm talking about returning to the earth, singing How Beautiful for Spacious Skies at the site where they are bulldozing our national parks, at the factories where they are spewing out their noxious fumes. It was Jesus who said that he will know us -- that we will be known for -- by our love for one another.

Carolyn

Carolyn Lockwood-Pitkin
Vermont

Howard,

First I must thank you sincerely and with great admiration for the effort you put in during this campaign. That your followers are angry or sad is a factor of the goals you led them towards. They were achievable, as you and they well knew, but not, as it turned out, in the vehicle provided by the Democratic Party.

Below is our email exchange in August. I will let you decide if my concern was well founded or not.

We now have three Americas. Three? Red, Blue and Neutral!

The last time I saw this degree of bigoted divisiveness was in Northern Ireland, which I left 15 years ago to come to the US. The similarities between Blues and Reds here to the Nationalist / Unionist (or the Catholic / Protestant as it was spun in the US) factions that existed in N. Ireland in the late 60s is uncanny and depressing.

It took people working outside the established parties - inspired significantly by the civil rights campaign in the US - to stress and eventually crack the mold in Ulster. There were many small and medium sized organizations, with varying agendas, united in their opposition to the establishment. When the cracks ruptured, change was inevitable. Granted it had a violent element but that was mainly a factor of Ireland's history. In time the reformers became mainstream political parties and the process is now near completion. The same could happen here.

Though much used, the saying that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting it to turn out different" is relevant. To believe that, somehow, the Democratic Party can serve as an effective opposition is, in my view after this election, the height of insanity.

Who will lead us out of the quagmire? Who or what movement will inspire Americans to take back their hard won liberties? Maybe South America is the place to look? What sort of a campaign would Hugo Chavez have run, do you think? Or maybe, Howard Dean!

Tony
________________________

August 21, 2004

Howard,

You wrote
"So, if you still have questions or concerns about the Democratic ticket, or platform, please write to one of us with your contact information, including your phone number, and one of us will get back to you soon"

I continue to be on the mailing list, hoping to hear something inspiring. I admire your efforts to keep communications

I was an active Dean supporter. After his bad showing in primaries, I continued to fund him, waiting to see if he would remain true to his message. In my view he did not. I then waited to see if he and some others I could support would be able to influence the Democratic ticket. The record shows they were, in essence, ignored.

Kerry/Edwards say they will be more effective bully-boys internationally than Bush, and seem to think this will win us back respect and support from overseas. The only heat in the campaign centers around who did what 30 years ago or where troops army will be stationed in 10 to 20 years years time. What matters is what is happening now, and in the immediate future.

For example, the Medicare vote was flagged as a 'test of loyalty' by the Democratic leadership. Nothing has happened to those Democrats that voted for the bill. The planet is being choked to death, but this is an invisible issue. The output from our educational system gets worse each year. These are only a few of many many examples of the Democrats being the other side of the Republican coin. Both are clearly in the pockets of business. In addition, and in contrast with Republicans, the Democrats are out of touch with the rank and file of their own party. They may win by default, but this is a sad reflection on state of US politics. How can we 'bring democracy' to other countries if we don't practice it here?

If this ticket is the best the opposition can muster, then clearly we need more time under Bush so that another Dean can rise up, and this time stick with the program and carry the country. Check out Lou Dobbs who says the country should be run for the benefit of the people. Now, that's an approach that could catch on!

Bush or Kerry makes no real difference. The winner will be business. As usual. I can't hold my nose hard enough to vote for Bush, but if I do vote it will be for change. And voting for Kerry/Edwards is a vote for the status quo. I want my vote (or abstention) to count!

If the Democrats are soundly defeated in November, it could be the best thing that ever happened to the party. If a new party emerges, it could be the best thing that happened to this country since we kicked out the Brits!

I know there are many others on both sides of the divide who feel as I do.

Tony O'Doherty
Thousand Oaks, CA.

Dear Friends -

I sit in my office and hundreds of e-mail messages pour in. So many of you are despondent, drained, frightened and, literally, sick. So many say you want to leave the country.

But we are Americans. Moreover, Americans who are progressive, intellectual, socially conscious members of the political, media, academic and creative communities, and thus we bear a special burden of responsibility for the behavior of our society. It is OUR nation that is the imperial power in the contemporary world, and every stupid, reckless, selfish decision our nation makes has the potential to harm billions of human beings, today and for generations to come. It is our moral obligation to stand and fight to reverse our country's destructive policies, for ourselves, our children, and all humanity. Even if we move away (physically OR emotionally) from an America whose government policies we loathe, what will our disengagement beget? Only AMERICANS can win this cataclysmic struggle.

Go ahead, renew your passport, but also think about which activist organization you can join (or support financially) to minimize the damage the Bush Administration will wreak in these next four years. What project can you integrate into your professional life to enlighten American society? Can you become engaged in the looming battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, to pull from the ashes a party that doesn't move to the right but rather finds the language and the candidates who can appeal to Americans' best instincts and win?

Candidates who actually inspire the American people instead of receiving whatever support they can muster only because of hatred of the opposition? I own an original 1930's campaign poster for Franklin Roosevelt, a simple sketch of his face and three words, "A Gallant Leader." What candidate could issue that poster today and pass the laugh test?

I also have precious mementoes from working with Eleanor Roosevelt in the late 1950's and early 1960's in the "Reform Democratic Movement" she launched with former NYS Governor and Senator Herbert Lehman to vanquish the tyrannical, closed and self-aggrandizing Democratic Party machines in New York, and to elect progressives to the House and Senate (the NYS Congressional Delegation had some of the most hawkish Cold Warriors of the era until this reform movement rose up and threw them out of office). I remember working for Robert F. Kennedy on his 1968 presidential campaign and seeing thousands of "Red State" average people reaching to touch his hand and emotionally responding to his message of fighting poverty and ending a fruitless, horrific war in Vietnam.

Today, citizens in the Red States are frightened, and have been manipulated into voting against their own interests. While his core message was distorted in the context of the "Confederate Flag" flap, what Howard Dean repeatedly said to white audiences in the South was: "The right-wing has captured your loyalty and your votes through a cynical, Nixon-crafted 'Southern Strategy.' They support flying the Confederate flag over the State Capital, or opposed Martin Luther King Day, or side with fundamentalists to keep certain books out of the library or to put creationism in the classroom. But after decades of manipulating emotional symbols that attracted your votes, what has the Republican right really DONE for you? Millions of your kids have NO health insurance or access to quality medical care; the right has tricked you into believing that universal health care will mean the triumph of 'socialism.' You have lost millions of jobs. Housing costs are eating up 30-50% of your gross household income. Your kids are getting second-rate educations, and they have to mortgage their lives to pay for college. Your real standard of living has declined. Is all this worth it?"

Our greatest challenge is to get this message out in a way that connects, and to ease fears about social issues that have been cynically manipulated by the right to keep Americans from seeing how their core social and economic interests are being thwarted. YOU must help make this happen.

Ethan

Ethan Geto
former NY State Director for Dean
New York City NY