Howard Dean recounted a recent conversation he had with someone from rural Georgia who asked him if he actually liked any Trump voters.
Dean said yes — “because when I was running for governor they were all voting for me.”
He was joking in a way, but he was touching on an important reality that he hoped fellow Democrats might contemplate.
Dean was governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003, and he maintained his popularity through that time by appealing to voters across the spectrum, including traditional, conservative, working-class Vermonters who otherwise might have voted for a Republican, and who later might have voted for Donald Trump.
Part of his success was due to his fiscal conservatism: He was intent on not wasting the taxpayers’ money. But beyond issues of policy, he said, there is another key to any politician’s success. “I was frank with them,” he said, “and I listened to them.”
Dean was speaking last week to a gathering in Middlebury two days after midterm elections, when Democrats showed strength that surprised many experts and many Democrats. By now he is something of an elder statesman — turning 74 on Thursday, teaching at Yale, pursuing work as a consultant — but speaking to an audience drawn together by the Hawthorne Club of Middlebury College and the Sheldon Museum, he displayed the same brash frankness that has always endeared him to Vermont voters.
It was the same frankness that propelled him to the front rank of presidential candidates in 2004 until his campaign faltered in Iowa.
But Dean was not entirely accurate when he said that future Trump voters had always backed him. His toughest race occurred in 2000 after he signed the pioneering law creating civil unions for same-sex couples. The conflict over civil unions provoked virulent outrage from voters who thought their values were being trampled and the so-called elites in Montpelier were not listening to them. “Take Back Vermont” signs appeared all across the state, presaging the demand by Trump supporters to take back America.
Dean nearly lost his reelection bid that year because his support among those future Trump voters had crumbled.
Today Dean dismisses Trump as someone with “serious psychiatric problems” but who is also a genius at exploiting other people’s frustrations and channeling blame — toward immigrants, people of color, Muslims, transgender people.
But the problem is not Trump, he said. The problem is the frustration of whole swaths of people, mainly men, who no longer feel valued in America. According to Dean, if you’re over 50, lack a college education and lose your job in this country — especially in rural regions — you’re out of luck, and Trump has been adept at giving you someone to blame.
He said this was not strictly an American problem. “This is going on all over the world.”
Authoritarian leaders have assumed power in India, Brazil, Hungary and Turkey, among other places. Right-wing parties with roots leading back to mid-20th-century fascism are on the rise in Italy, France, even Sweden. Narrow, right-wing nationalism has created havoc in Great Britain. And, of course, Russia’s dictatorial president, Vladimir Putin, has plunged Europe into war on the basis of his quasi-fascist delusions.
That Trump has sought to further Russia’s interests and to undermine Ukraine has been made evident through numerous investigations and is consistent with Trump’s own authoritarian tendencies.
The causes of the malaise afflicting Western democracies are many and familiar. The deindustrialization of America’s Rust Belt, and comparable regions in Western Europe, have cast aside millions of workers. At the same time, technology and the pervasive presence of the internet have abetted the fragmentation of societies, leaving people isolated, staring at screens and latching onto what they view as kindred spirits at websites speaking to their frustrations.
Dean noted that the younger generations live their lives online in a way that older generations find difficult to comprehend. And though the internet empowers individuals, it does not create the kind of social movements that require people to work together in the actual, tangible, day-to-day world. People can organize online, but they have to do the real work in the real world.
He said it is the younger generations who will have to create the changes needed to avert future disasters or political decline. Dean categorized himself as part of the “gerontocracy” that will soon be yielding power to the younger generations, and he said he hoped new leaders and everyday people would step forward, become involved, organize, and learn about the value of teamwork. Liking a post on Facebook will not be enough.
None of it is easy. He recalled a conversation with a high Ukrainian official several years ago. He was urging her to curb the power of Ukrainian oligarchs. But then he caught himself — realizing that, since the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case, American oligarchs have had free rein to spend dark money in U.S. elections. Who was he to chide her about the dangerous power of oligarchs?
The volatile politics of the present makes progress on important issues difficult. Dean said immigration policy was hampered by Democratic fears of Republican attacks. He said the United States would benefit from an influx of a million immigrants, or even 3 million, but Republicans are ready to pounce on any Democratic proposal to relax immigration policy.
“Democrats are afraid,” he said.
Vermonters who remember Dean’s years as governor, and then his startling rise as a potential presidential candidate, remember his energy, his straightforward manner, and his ability to tap into the yearning and idealism of the younger generation. When he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee after his presidential bid, he promoted a 50-state strategy to establish a Democratic presence everywhere in the country. One consequence was the election of Barack Obama.
Today it sounds as if Howard Dean, the elder statesman, is calling for a new version of the younger Howard Dean — and a politics that harnesses the energies of the younger generation and listens to people in all parts of the country. It worked before. Maybe it will work again.