Dean's Next Battle: Beat The Conservative Book Industry

By GottaLaff

I think Ellen linked me to this just so she could see the Young Howard Dean photo again:

Howard Dean's appointment to the chair of the Progressive Book Club is being hailed as a major step on the part of Democrats to close one of the few remaining institutional deficits they have with Republicans.

I love that "one of the few remaining" part. Look at us closing the gaps all over the place like that!

For years, progressives have watched with a mix of envy and wonder at the capacity of the conservative movement to nurture and promote its young writers. As the Democratic Party and like-minded institutions have matched their ideological counterparts in other organizational functions, that gap in book promotion has lingered.

Nothing worse than a lingering gap, I always say.

Enter Dean.

That would be "50-State Strategy" Dean, don'tcha know.

"Books are extraordinarily important, even in this day of the Internet," said Dean. "It is the one place where you can have the time, take the length, do the work that you need to do, to fill out the kind of ideas and the kind of framework that you need for a better world. The Progressive Book Club (PBC) was started as an antidote to the framework for a worse world by the conservative book club. They have been saying all kinds of things that bring us back for a long time. Yet their ideas are potent because there hasn't been an organized opposition."

There is now.

The Conservative Book Club has more than a four-decade head start on its progressive counterpart. [...] Organizations like the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation often buy books in bulk while conservative media outlets host authors on their shows to discuss and promote their work, often pushing books up the bestseller lists. [...]

"I don't think we are there right now," [Democratic strategist Mike Lux] said. "I think progressives really need to get into the idea of helping market progressive media. And not just books, but blogs, radio shows and TV shows, everything. We really don't do a good job of marketing our idea. Conservatives have always been ahead of us. They still are."

That would be because they have their very own cable channel. We don't.

Dean's task is to connect those dots between established Democratic institutions, young progressive authors and sympathetic, or even mainstream media outlets. Initially approached to serve on board, then asked to be the board's chair, he is being asked, in essence, apply a version of 50-state-strategy to the progressive book industry.

Perfect fit. Love this idea. No, more than love... lerve.

H/t: Ellen