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January 24, 2004
Why the Democratic establishment doesn't like Dean
Not Putting Their Money Where His Mouth Is
The ebbing of Howard Dean was a palpable relief to most of New York's big Democratic donors. "We are alive!" one leading fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee exulted the morning after Iowa. "I've finally got a product I can work with," was the way John Kerry fundraiser Toni Goodale put it.
...
Few of the top 20 Democrats who run the town's political money had been Dean supporters, but when his nomination looked inexorable they tried gamely to psych themselves into candidate-enthusiasm. (Their kids liked him.) The atmosphere at Upper East Side dinner parties was oddly reminiscent of the height of the Internet boom, when pre-bubble smarties like Donald Trump and Henry Kravis started to wonder if they were dinosaurs yet couldn't shake their unease about virtual fortunes.
But then Iowa got tighter and, at a benefit dinner last week for the International Women's Health Coalition honoring Kofi Annan, which was packed with Democratic donors, you could practically hear the exhaling. Some of it was about electability, yes, but it was also about a restoration to relevance. Dean's Internet base had taken away the money guys' power to anoint, and with it the glimpse of presidential fun-rides to come. The morning after that dinner, for instance, investor Alan Patricof and investment banker Stan Shuman, two longtime Democratic givers, would board a private plane for a jaunt to the Jeddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia with former president Bill Clinton. No such sugarplum visions were roused by the rise of Internet Dean.
It's what we've said all along. Dean poses a threat, real or imagined, to establishment politics.
Posted by glyphic at January 24, 2004 02:31 PM