Interesting things brewing...

...for those with an eye on the Democratic Party and/or progressive politics in general. While new Majority Leader Reid admires Scalia and makes nice with the Republican leadership, Howard Dean is preparing a major speech for tomorrow that may declare a new campaign to make the Dems stand for something again -- and may also be his way of announcing an interest in the DNC chairmanship.

He'll argue that the Democratic Party should be rebuilt from the grass roots up, that it should be driven by millions of Americans who make small contributions rather than by a handful of moneyed interests, and that the party should focus not just on presidential politics in swing states like Ohio and Florida but also on down-ballot races even in the reddest of states. On matters of substance, Dean may not resurrect his borrowed line about representing the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," but you can count on him to make it clear he isn't joining the "go along to get along" wing of the party, either.

"If you want to win, you have to fight, and you have to stand for something," Dean wrote in a Web column a few days after the election. While centrist Democrats like Reid were scrambling to find common ground with the president and the red state voters who elected him, Dean used his first sustained election postmortem to proclaim his disagreement with Bush "on almost every direction he takes us in."

I'd rather see somebody taking the offense than trying to race rightward after the other party! Will be interested to see what comes of this... (check Kos for updates, as he has a couple favorite horses in the race)

(via Ghost in the Machine)

Update: kos gives the transcript of Dean's speech here.