From:
http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.witcover07jul07,0,2908049.column?coll=bal-oped-headlinesTake off the gloves
Jules Witcover
Originally published Jul 7, 2003
WASHINGTON - The so-called first-tier Democratic presidential candidates can learn something more from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean beyond the effectiveness of the Internet as a tool for fund raising and grass-roots organizing. The more prominent party figures - Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, all of whom voted for President Bush's resolution to go to war against Iraq - can learn that the way to win over many Democratic voters is to emulate Mr. Dean in taking on directly the one man they increasingly love to hate.
Mr. Dean's unvarnished verbal assaults on Mr. Bush, particularly for his invasion of Iraq and general freewheeling on foreign policy, have distinguished him from these early Democratic front-runners and clearly were a factor in his raising $7.5 million in the last three months, largely via the Internet. That aggressive anti-Bush posture likewise was the key to surprising fund-raising achievements by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the strongest anti-war voice in Congress.
Perhaps unwittingly, the president is helping the political education of these first-tier challengers with his continued resort to bombastic cowboy imagery that drives many Democrats crazy. His latest taunt of "Bring 'em on" to militants who ambush U.S. troops in Iraq has stirred even Mr. Gephardt, who said he had heard "enough of the phony, macho rhetoric" from the man whose war he voted for and continues to defend.
<...>
At least two developments since most of the shooting stopped in Iraq give political ammunition to those Democratic candidates willing to tap into the deep animosity of many in their party against this president. <...> The first is the growing doubt about Mr. Bush's credibility after his selling of the Iraqi invasion on grounds of an imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction that are yet to be found. <...> The second is the troublesome aftermath of the conquest of Iraq, including daily U.S. casualties, which caused the president to acknowledge the other day that the United States confronts a "massive and long-term undertaking" there. He pledged that American forces would not leave Iraq "before freedom is fully established." 
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