Hello from Nashville. I'm Chuck Todd, and this is the Chuck Todd cast. So Democrats,

losses in this year's election extend beyond any one person candidate or issue. They revealed a deeper problem.

The party seems to have with all voters and it showed itself in pretty much all 50 states. My guest today is

Howard Dean. He's the former governor of Vermont. And from 2005 to 2009, he was chairman of the

Democratic National Committee. He became famous for pitching a 50 state strategy, which to Democrats at

the time was, oh, wow, we've never heard of something like that, which is sort of

oddly a head scratcher. If you're a national political party, you probably should always have a 50

state strategy. But it was Howard Dean that got the party refocused again and arguably they

didn't look back for nearly 20 years. But before we get started, remember to stick around for an

audience question and send us your suggestions for this year's, what if that I'll be doing are a little my obsession with butterfly effects.

So if you have an alternative historical question you'd like to see us tackle, please submit it to the chuck toadcast at gmail.com.

We'll be looking for those emails.

But with that, I don't have a huge vamp because I want to vamp here with Howard Dean.

Governor Dean, welcome back to the Toddcast.

Thanks for having me on.

Well, I want to start with this moment we're in.

My professional life began in 92, and that was right, you know, basically a four-year reclamation project after

the Michael Dukakis debacle. Then there was 04. Now there's now, and I single those periods out

because, believe it or not, Governor, the Democrats have only lost the popular vote three times

since 1988, 88, 2004, and now 2024. After 88, there was a big fight over what the

party should do. It was a healthy fight, and the party got healthy, won the presidency in 92.

You participated in a big fight, no5, right? Got the party healthy.

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