Viva Howard Dean?

I'm going to go ahead and ramble on about Dean and his 50 State Plan again...

Sure, I am no Deaniac, but his 50-state plan is great (don't get me wrong, I love the Ragin' Cajun as much as anyone...). Reading DailyKos today allows me to remind you how important it is to keep Dean and how we lost the South in the first place. This is what not to do now:
"Now, this doesn't mean we need to abandon the South, belittle the South, mock the South, piss on the South, or ignore the South. A national party with a real mandate needs to be competitive in every corner of our great nation."

He's exactly right. I read What's the Matter with Kansas and hated it. But, I am (sort of) from the South and I understand exactly what Kos and Thomas Frank are saying. The people of the South have been mislead, just as much of the Midwest had been, by Republicans but the Democrats need only to step in. The South was written off bu all of us, especially after '04 with the maps detailing "JesusLand" (http://www.basetree.com/graphics/jesusland.jpg) as everything that was not California, New York, and Hawaii. If I considered myself a true Southerner and planned on living in the South forever, I would have become enraged and voted with the party that was accepting me. Clearly the left wanted nothing to do with the South!

Coming from Northern Kentucky, where a Democrat 2-term incumbent couldn't beat a one-term, Republican party liner, George Bush lover to win his Congressional seat back, I could very much say "Write it off, the South is done! It's finally over", but the Democratic party can not. This year, we picked up seats in the South, which should tell us that these people are just looking for the quality candidates they have not gotten in years. We finally have a chance to encourage good Democratic candidates to run and bring the South to the good side. Let's keep putting money (and faith) behind these Dems in the South and they might just win.