Salon: Rocking Dean

Rocking Dean
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At what was supposed to be a friendly chat with the "youth vote," the Democratic candidates ganged up on the front-runner about his Confederate flag comments.

The "Rock the Vote" forum in Boston’s Faneuil Hall was supposed to be a feel-good affair, a chance for the candidates to "connect" with America’s youth. It was a "Rock the Vote" event in 1992, after all, where Bill Clinton cheerfully told a young crowd that he preferred boxers over briefs.

Front-running candidate Howard Dean found it to be quite different, though, after he came under fierce attack for recent comments that he made about the need to appeal to southern whites “with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.”

After the debate, Dean dismissed the criticism as "just political silliness." It's true he'd made similar comments previously about white voters and Confederate flags, with no resulting controversy, and he said that he meant it as a call for a broad Democratic constituency.

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/04/rock_vote/