Confederate Flog -- The new bum rap on Howard Dean

by William Saletan

http://slate.msn.com/id/2090775/



Dean has been using the line about the flag throughout the campaign.

not that the station is biased -

after all it is news media.

:-(

Dean's "Alpha Male" or "Earth Tones" moment. The distressing thing is: When did Rove start working on Democratic Party primary strategies?

the Republicans picked up the governorships of Kentucky and Mississippi. Dean is essentially correct in saying that working-class blacks and working-class whites have more in common than not. However, the Repugs, like their Dixie-crat antecedents, pander to the baser instincts of human nature, racism now gussied-up in the guise of "culture war," effectively keeping natural allies opposed to one another.

Dean's opponents knew what he meant, too. That's why none of them raised a whimper when he used the flag line at the DNC meeting, or when he used it again at the California State Democratic Convention. Why are they pouncing on him now? Because he has become the frontrunner and because in his latest repetition of the line, he shorthanded it. He was answering a reporter's question about whether he was too sympathetic to the National Rifle Association. Here's how Saturday's Des Moines Register reported Dean's answer:

Dean has said 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore lost the election because he failed to win Southern states, where disaffected Democrats who favor gun owners' rights were reluctant to support him. "I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," Dean said Friday in a telephone interview from New Hampshire. "We can't beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats."

Nothing in the quote indicates any departure from the rationale Dean has expressed all along: He wants the votes of these people despite their fondness for the Confederate flag, not because of it.

In Tuesday's debate, Dean did a cruddy job of explaining this. But that doesn't excuse the dishonesty of his opponents. Al Sharpton rebuked Dean, saying, "You can't bring a Confederate flag to the table of brotherhood." But if the black people who watched Dean's speech at the DNC meeting had seen no possibility of brotherhood with anyone who displayed that flag, they wouldn't have applauded Dean's statement. Of course they hate the flag. They just refuse to write off the vote of everyone who displays it.