LEWISTON – After giving up on his own election, former presidential candidate Howard Dean is back on the campaign trail, working to get other Democrats elected and re-elected to political office.
On Saturday, he was in Maine, the 34th stop on his national tour.
As chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Dean is spearheading an effort to recapture Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008.
At a speech to nearly 500 enthusiastic Maine Democrats gathered at the Armory for their annual Jefferson Jackson Dinner, Dean painted a grim picture of America, peppered with references to Republican “malfeasance, corruption and incompetence.”
He called the Bush administration the most corrupt since former President Warren Harding in the 1920s.
“We must do better, and we will do better than this,” he said repeatedly.
Pointing to probes of top White House officials and the recent arrest of a GOP congressional leader, Dean said Democrats must come to the rescue as the party of moral values.
If Democrats don’t seize control of the federal government, “Our country will continue its moral decay,” he said.
Republicans have engaged in politics of fear, attacking groups of Americans and dividing the country, turning it against itself, he said.
That’s the biggest danger posed by conservatives, he said.
“I am tired of the Ayatollahs of the right.”
Dean praised Maine Democratic office-holders, including Gov. John Baldacci, for creating a state-subsidized health insurance program and prescription drug benefits.
He urged more Democrats to run for local and state offices or work on the campaigns of those who are.
“We got into this fix because we thought somebody else was going to do the work for us,” he said.
Dean’s national strategy includes paying for four DNC workers in every state to assist in local and regional efforts to elect Democrats. Maine has gotten three DNC employees so far.
“That’s what this is all about,” he said.
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