This is going to be some excerpts from
one of the most satisfying diaries I've seen all season, titled
"Is Howard Dean's strategy working?". And it's not even from DailyKos--it's from Redstate, our Republican counterpart. It was first linked by SouthSideDem in
this comment attached to Delawareliberal's
excellent diary about the 50-state strategy in Delaware. It describes (from the losing side's point of view) what the DNC did to win a specific downticket race in Delaware, but McJoan's
front page post about Chris Bowers' article shows the same thing happened everywhere in the country.
Below the fold I'll paste a few excerpts. You should really read the whole thing on Redstate yourself. The discussion thread there is interesting too.
More...
From the Redstate diary:
The Delaware Republicans were putting up the most experienced prosecutor, with a 6-1 favorability, as their candidate for attorney general. The Democrats ran Beau Biden, who's never prosecuted a single criminal case in Delaware. In the final weeks of the campaign, the Republican Ferris Wharton, and two Republican state senate (farm team) candidates held leads in the polls. That all changed however, in the final 72 hours of the campaign.
Turns out, the Democrats used the DNC's $100,000 to pay for 2 field representatives who engineered the largest GOTV effort the Democrats had ever put forth in Delaware's history. The state party used that money to rent 36 vans for union workers and paid college students to go door to door and drag Democrats to the polls and pull the blue lever. It provided the difference as Beau Biden won by a few percentage points. Both of the Republicans hoped-for farm team candidates lost badly as well.
While Dean's strategy may have seemed initially to be a poor use of limited resources, it effectively destroyed the Republican Party in Delaware. [emph added]
The conclusion is sweet:
Republicans have criticized him everywhere with "scream contests", and Democrats have disagreed with him internally. Yet the week after the polls closed it wasn't the DNC chair who had to resign and whose replacement was being debated.
And the aftermath, as described in Delawareliberal's great Delaware: a "50 state strategy" case study diary linked near the top] (read it!): the Delaware Dems are keeping all their staff members to get ready for the next cycle, and staying in contact with all their volunteers. The Delaware Republicans are laying off their entire staff.
Edit: removed some unnecessary snark here, see the discussion thread.
What a piece. I pasted it to a few comment threads here but am diarying it because it's just so great, it should get more exposure.