Eric Alterman: Washington Goes to War (with Howard Dean)

Saddam Hussein may be out of his spider hole, but Washington's real enemy is still at large. His name: "Howard Dean"--and nobody in America poses a bigger threat to the city's sense of its own importance. New Republic writer Michelle Cottle returned from maternity leave to find Washington fit for a "Tarantino-style blood bath," with the Democratic front-runner cast as a "paleoliberal...a heartless conservative...too naïve to beat Bush...too politically cynical to trust...a Stalinist... a neofascist kills babies and drinks their blood."

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Another part of the problem is that punditocracy poster boy Joe Lieberman is currently more likely to get the Republican nomination than the Democratic one--and more deserving as well. Dean is being punished, in part, for cleaning Joe's clock. Kurtz speaks for fellow Lieberman lovers when he insists, sans evidence, that "Dean and the war's opponents have not yet come up with a convincing argument that the status quo would have been preferable." Just whom Kurtz has in mind when he employs the phrase "convincing" is left undefined, of course. It obviously does not apply to most of the planet's population, since outside the United States, only Israelis supported Bush's invasion, and that was before anyone was aware of just how dishonest were the Administration's arguments for war and incompetent its postwar planning. Even following Saddam's capture, however, 42 percent remain convinced that the war was not worth fighting; 78 percent of Americans questioned professed to share Dean's view that Saddam's capture did nothing to reduce the threat of terrorism--a correct judgment, apparently, as evidenced by the current orange alert.

Dean has some problems, no doubt, but the pundits hardly seem to notice that George W. ("You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror") Bush cannot pretend to defend deceiving the nation into war anymore. When ABC's Diane Sawyer pressed him in an interview about whether Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction or merely would have liked to have them, Bush replied contemptuously, "What's the difference?" (Try this, Mr. President: "I shot that man, Your Honor, because he pointed a gun at me and was about to pull the trigger," or "I shot that man, Your Honor, because he looked like he was thinking about getting a gun.")

We've all been to this movie before, of course, just one election ago, and it's therefore no surprise that the anti-Dean media fury has increased exponentially with Al Gore's brave, antiestablishment endorsement. In the meantime, the question of the Democratic nomination has come down to this: Will this election be about turningout your base, or winning over swing voters? Gore did the latter but not the former. He won the election, but, thanks to Ralph Nader's megalomania (with an assist from the SCLM--So-Called Liberal Media--and Gore's own crappy campaign), not by enough to prevent the Supreme Court from handing it to Bush. Today, the nation remains no less divided than four years ago, with about 20 percent of the vote up for grabs. The punditocracy has chosen its side. Perhaps it's time the rest of us choose ours.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20040112&s=alterman

I will vote for Howard Dean in the Arkansas primary, and, God willing, in the general election. If for some reason Dr. Dean doesn't get the nomination, I'll still vote Democratic. The important thing is to get rid of Bush.

attacks Dean, he will be seen as the outsider and we all know what that meant in California.

Thats one of the many reasons I think Deans campaign and candidacy has been so successful.

If anyone has the real ingredients for offering this country the best of both worlds, it is undoubtedly Dean.

He comes from the so-called establishment realm, and what makes Dean impressive is that he seems to encompass an appreciation and gratitude for the opportunities his upbringing has allowed him, and has not assumed an air of entitlement and expectation that is noticeable with many others raised in the same environment.

So he knows that world, and I would assume is still involved in it through his own roots, and thats important. Clinton didnt have that advantage, and I dont believe the Kennedys fully did either.

I would say out of all the presidents we have had, it seems to me Governor Dean would be closer to FDR in not only his outlook but also his belief in helping those who did not have the same opportunities by being born into privelege and at the same time maintaining a reasonable, conservative approach to spending. When I look at how much spending the current Administration is doing, I am amazed that they can call themselves conservative.

Overall, Dean continues to show how he is impressed and interested in and by all Americans and their life experiences.