The Deaning of Music City

When the history of the 2004 presidential campaign is written, will Howard Dean’s maverick run for the White House turn out to be a major story line, an intriguing subplot or just a footnote? Recent polls have the physician and former Vermont governor leading the Democratic field in New Hampshire polls by a hefty 21 points. But the answer isn’t lurking in New Hampshire, where a primary win by the former governor of a neighboring state will be interesting but hardly remarkable. Can Dean catch on beyond the relatively progressive Northeast? Some liken Dean’s bandwagon more to a social movement than a political campaign. Can it move Middle Tennessee?

No question about it, say animated members of the steering committee of “Nashville for Dean.” Led by retired insurance broker Gary Cobb, who also chairs Tennessee for Dean, the Nashville group first came together in March with a meeting on the back deck at Café Coco off Ellison Place. In the six months since, they’ve added some 300 Nashvillians to their local list of supporters, and also report that almost 900 residents of Davidson County have registered with the national Dean Web site for updates or to make donations. A Nashville house party in July raised $5,700 for the national campaign organization.

One of the raps on Deanmania is that it draws volume but not variety, appealing mostly to youngish white educated professionals (the clinical version) who wear Birkenstocks, listen to public radio, put ethanol in their Volvos and carry a torch for George McGovern (the cynical version). Jonathan Chait of The New Republic called Dean a “yuppie demagogue” who “has the ability to whip a crowd of NPR listeners into a frenzy, something previously thought impossible.”

The Nashville for Dean steering committee fits the clinical stereotype somewhat, but hardly the cynical one. At a meeting last week, the 14 around a big table at Café Coco included (beyond Cobb) a computer programmer, a public school teacher, a freelance photographer, an industrial salesman, a union representative, a public relations professional, a songwriter and Web designer, a college professor, a filmmaker, an economist, two lawyers and a small business owner. They ranged in age from 25 to 63. Nine are native Tennesseans, and all but one of the rest have lived here for more than 10 years. All are white. A few puffed cigarettes. One or two wore Birkenstocks.

Some say the narrowness of his base is an inevitable product of how the campaign has unfolded. “When you outreach through the Internet, that’s what you get,” says Rosie Naccarato, the economist on the Nashville committee. But committee members insist his appeal is wider, pointing to the diversity of reasons that brought them to the table. A few say Dean’s position against war in Iraq piqued their interest and triggered a closer look. Rebecca Luxford, the small business owner, was drawn to Dean’s take on children’s health. Gary Cobb worked on Al Gore’s campaign and found that Dean comes closest to Gore on a variety of issues, including the environment and health care. Others mention his approach to small business concerns and to energizing rural communities. Libba Gillum Miller, the photographer, says she has “never been active in politics my whole life”—music, presumably, to the ears of a candidate trying to build a populist movement out of whole cloth.

But as the Dean campaign gains steam, electability questions loom: Can he beat George W. Bush? Critical here is the (essentially distorted) perception that Dean is an extreme liberal who as nominee will play into Republican fantasies of McGovern redux. One writer for the conservative “Washington Dispatch” Web site calls Dean “a Karl Rove wet dream” and urges Republicans to give him money, register as Democrats and vote for Dean in primaries. Dean’s rebuttal (in a recent Oregon interview): “When they come to Vermont and discover I’ve balanced budgets, that I’m strong on social programs but am tough at measuring results, suddenly this McGovern stuff melts away.”

Nashville for Dean committee members confidently (if a tad simplistically) dismiss Republican salivation as fear in disguise. “They’re scared to death,” says filmmaker Mark Naccarato, who adds that Dean’s positions are “very eclectic—he can’t be neatly packaged into a liberal or conservative ideology.” Paul Ambrosius, a lawyer, thinks it’s just a matter of getting his ideas and style in front of people: “When people learn about him...they like him.” School teacher Patrick Britt, who says (confesses?) he voted for Bob Dole in 1996, cites Dean’s “magnetism and charisma” as key to his chances.

But prospects against a post-9-11 war-infatuated incumbent may turn more on how Dean handles issues of terrorism and defense than on unbridled optimism. As The New Republic’s Chait puts it, Dean supporters “fail to face up to the unpleasant fact that the Democratic Party has a national security credibility problem that, if not solved, will be politically fatal.... When asked which party can better defend against terrorism, the public consistently gives the GOP an enormous edge.”