Howard Dean has announced the first dozen candidacies that DFA2 will be supporting this cycle. Some folks over at Kos who clearly never "got" Dean's candidacy or vision are bemoaning the fact that it's a too eclectic list, seemingly devoid of strategy. I disagree and said:

As often happens, people tend not to actually listen to what Howard Dean says and then act all surprised when he does what he says he's going to do.

All throughout his campaign he encouraged people to run for local office. It's what got him his start in politics, after all. All along he said we have to start contesting every race and standing up against the wackos even in 'strongly' Republican districts. And we have to hold the line in solidly Democratic ones.

Once they started thinking about DFA2, it was clear that he was going to support a range and variety of candidates for all sorts of difference offices.

They've also said that there will be hundreds more candidates that DFA will support or help out. This is just the first batch and it seems strategic to me in the sense that it demonstrates the range of candidacies they're interested in. If it had all been U.S. House or U.S. Senate candidates, how inspiring would that be to all of people who've been encouraged to run for local office by the Dean campaign?

Remember, they collected names of 100 local DFA-inspired candidates just on the blog one week.

And the accusation of political fundraising patronage is just over the top. Do you have any evidence that any of these candidates were the equivalent of Dean pioneers?

Dean, like any good scientist, is engaged in long-term strategic thinking here. We're all just too caught up in the week-to-week, election-to-election horse races to notice. That's alright though; nobody noticed when Ralph Reed did it, until it was too late. (Well, a few people did, but they were ignored.)

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NYCO, galiel, jms and others had some good comments in the Kos thread as well. The Democratic party, as represented by the nailbiters in this thread, is still just so completely riddled with artery-clogging fear, even at a place like dKos. Real shame, that.