Dean Last Man Standing for DNC Chair
WOODRUFF: So, now we see, it's Howard Dean who is the last man standing in the race for Democratic party chairman. We asked Chuck Todd of "The Hotline" to tell us about the winners and losers in the process of selecting a new party leader. Chuck of course is the editor-in-chief of "The Hotline," an insider's political briefing produced every day by the "National Journal." Chuck, we know it's Howard Dean, are there some other winners in all this?</s>CHUCK TODD, "THE HOTLINE": I think there are. Let's start out with the thing we care about most here in politics and that's the next presidential race. That means Iowa will turn out to be somewhat of a winner here. They had their Democratic leaders come out early. They're trying very hard to protect their first in the nation status. From my understanding, the Dean folks are very well aware of how early and united the Iowa Democrats were. Terry McAuliffe is a huge winner out of this. The more people have been nervous about Howard Dean, the more compliments they have been throwing Terry McAuliffe's way. And so more people have been noticing some of the work he did. His election record isn't great but he put the machine in place to keep the Democratic party competitive. The McMahon clan, this is Steve McMahon, Tom McMahon, McMahon brother-in-law, Mark Squier, the McMahon family has been very big part of the Howard Dean campaigns from the presidential race to this. They're going to be the new go-to consulting firm</s>WOODRUFF: He came out as an early endorsee.</s>TODD: An early endorsee and sort of started the avalanche.</s>WOODRUFF: Chuck, if those are the winners, who has come out of this not exactly smelling like a rose?</s>TODD: If I were the New Hampshire Democratic party, I'd be nervous. The Dean people have noticed that some of New Hampshire folks were on the anti-Dean bandwagon for a little while and they're trying to protect first in the nation status. Congressional leadership never was quiet or shy about searching for an alternative to Dean particularly relations with Nancy Pelosi and the DNC will be interesting to watch over time. Some of the Democratic governors in particular, Bill Richardson and Ed Rendell were very aggressive in looking for Dean alternatives and the Dean people are well aware of this. And finally Joe Trippi, I think a year ago when Joe Trippi and Howard Dean parted ways, most people would have predicted that Joe Trippi would be the guy that everybody would be turning to to fix the Democratic party not Howard Dean and the roles are completely reversed. Trippi is out of politics, Dean is very much running the show on the Democratic side.</s>WOODRUFF: It will be interesting to see if there is any fence mending going on in the weeks to come. Is there anybody out there who doesn't fall into either category?</s>TODD: The name that we seem to leave out of these two categories are the Clintons because and there's all sorts of conspiracy theories that I've been hearing from people on some of the -- in that anti-Dean movement -- that the Clintons could have been the people that could have, if they wanted to stop Dean, they could have. They could have united all the factions and told them we're all going to get behind one candidate but they didn't so some people think that the Clintons like this idea that just like Bill Clinton ran against Ron Brown in that DNC when he had to in the primaries in '91 that it might be good for Hillary Clinton that somebody that's prestigious, more liberal than her is running the Democratic party and she can almost run against him, or embrace him, whatever is the better thing to do for 2008. So we'll see if this has been good strategy by the Clintons as time goes by.</s>WOODRUFF: Could that be a triangle or is that my imagination?</s>TODD: Familiar tactic, isn't it?</s>WOODRUFF: Chuck Todd, thank you. "The Hotline" an insider's political briefing is produced every day by the "National Journal." You can go online to Nationaljournal.com for subscription information. Thank you, Chuck.</s>TODD: Thanks, Judy. In Senator Schumer's home state, we talked to him a few minutes ago, a seemingly never-ending election finally is over. The story ahead.