"Dean Gets It"

Firedoglake:

From Howard Dean's briefing at the National Press Club this morning:

Question: What role did the liberal blogosphere play?

Howard Dean:

That’s a growing influence on politics in general. There is also a conservative blogosphere, not only the liberal blogosphere, of course.

The netroots community can be very proud. They’re playing a bigger role.

Without the blogs, Jerry McInerny and Carole Shay (NH-1), would not have won. Entirely grassroots effort, without support form the Party, including us.

A big deal.

Here’s an even bigger deal. As you know, robocalls, flyers, low-ball election techniques. We knew about that instantly because of the blogs. We are not sure (Repubs) did it more than in the past, but we knew about it faster. Updates every 10 minutes from people who called 1-888-DEM-VOTE. (or whatever). We were able to get lawyers to polling places immediately.

The instantaneousness of the blogs, of people who read the blogs, who get that information to us, is a huge improvement over 2004.

Huge thank you to Prof for transcribing this for all of us. And an even bigger thanks to Howard Dean, whose 50 State Strategy brought us a whole lot of great surprises. Here's to the politicians remembering that they work for us.