If Dean loses...it won't be because of Dean

It'll be because of these endless attacks:

In ten minutes, I have learned that

- John Breaux has said that Dean won't win.

- Gephardt supporters are running ads comparing Dean to bin Laden.

- A Clark supporter has started a "stop Dean" movement.

- Lieberman "fears that America under Dean won't be safer."

My God, I understand that you want your candidates to win. But hating Dean for no other reason than his success will only turn Dean supporters away.

I began this nomination process with an open mind. I was then torn between Dean and Clark. Now I have come out for Dean. Will these attacks get me to stop supporting Dean? No. If anything, it makes me want him to win more. But I realise that it also sends a message to the moderates and independents of this country. "There is something wrong with our front runner." Even though there is nothing wrong with him. He does as well as every one else. He is as liberal/moderate as all the top contenders. This is just about desperation. But desperation that drives a wedge within our own party. That's the danger.

If a prevailing anti-Dean attitude is building in the middle-classes, it is because Democrats, NOT REPUBLICANS, have created it. There seem to be some Democrats who say, "if my candidate can't be President, then no Democrat can be President in 2004." Well this whole thing may be over before it begins with that kind of attitude.

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I don't think Jeter or any Dean supporter ever said "Nothing is ever Dean's fault."

The point of the post seems to be that Lieberman, Kerry and Gephardt are now doing the Republican's job for them. Bush won't have to hire one ad man. He'll simply sample the Bush Lite crowd's ads.

Who did Dean piss on? Oh, when he said they voted FOR THE ILLEGAL INVASION AND OCCUPATION? How is that pissing on anyone? Did Dean show OBL's face and voice-over implication that another Dem can't protect Americans?

The gist of the post is that if Dean fails, it won't be from any of his actions, but it'll be from pettiness of the spoilsports who can't stand not having their candidate chosen. This is shockingly wrong for two major reasons: legitimate concerns exist about this person as a candidate, and his very statements and tone are often wildly unattractive.

He alienates many by puffing up and making pronouncements, tarring many of his opponents simultaneously and literally spitting derision at fellow Democrats. In juvenile terms: he started it. This, in itself, has turned many people off. If others are supporting their own candidates, surely some are just being childish and petty about it, but many may truly think that another of them is much better. To be offended and riled up at having your candidate slagged and hectored is not the sole province of Dean lovers; we all have a moral right to feel that if the person in question measures up.

I absolutely did address the gist of the post: it may well be him and his people, themselves, who bring this upon themselves. If you sneer at people and call them cockroaches, Bush-lite, and taxcutters, it wears thin. If you do this while relying on knowingly incorrect statements (the tax issue), then your character is to be called into question. If after having done all this--starting the provocation and flagrantly misrepresenting--you then adopt the stance of the betrayed pristine virgin, then you reap a whirlwind. You're reaping a whirlwind. It's human nature. It's richly deserved. I say that your faction is the one causing the most destruction to the party, and the other voices you hear saying the same thing aren't all just suckers and swine.

While some of you see fit to blame the rest of us for being less decent humans for having the gall to not share your enthusiasm, you incur our ire for deliberately making yourselves so outrageous and tactically unethical that you may be bringing down the hopes of our party.

It goes both ways. What gives you the right to go off on a snarling tizzy and alienate friend and foe alike? Just because you're called into account for your actions? That smacks of privilege. Who do you guys think you are? Does the war stance--spotty as it was, early on--grant you the blank check to run willy-nilly? If it did, then Dean wouldn't lump Kucinich into the same smear as the others, or he'd at least admit it when confronted directly in an open debate.

The gist of the thread starter is twofold: that nobody could have a pure reason for disliking Dean, so it had to be some kind of mean-spirited vengeance, and that none of this backlash was Dean's fault at all. He was a sweet gentle soul who's being conspired against by evil machine politicians and assorted people haters; he didn't provoke a thing. He didn't provoke a thing. He didn't provoke a thing.

It won't be Dean's fault if he fails, it'll be the rest of the ingrates who won't accept his unquestioned superiority and right to lay waste to the world.

It's very simple: you're the frontrunners; you're going to draw fire. Some will be fair, some won't, but it's a defensive campaign now, and the charming fervor of the underdog of the early days, if not modified, now echoes like the arrogant wrath of the superior.

It absolutely WILL be Dean's fault if he fails, and it'll be his fault if he fails the party. You've heard the line that "the only one who can defeat Dean now is Dean himself", haven't you? I didn't make that up. I'm not the only one who feels that. All those who feel that aren't shrinking violet Bush-appeasers.

I'd be called a RWinger. You sure laid a lot on me for just being a regular person who happens to support Dean. I've never attacked you or anyone else in the manner of which you speak in your post. Your intense defensiveness tells me someone said something really stupid to you, but it wasn't me.

You point about how Dean criticized the Senators. Well, don't you see that they have attacked him mercilessly in the debates? It's politics. Dean's ain't crying about it, why are you?

I think you're right, Dean can lose this himself. It's a long way to next November. But, the fact that so many people say flat-out "he can't win" are what makes his supporters even more determined to help him.

Maybe I'm wrong but I thought Jeter was speaking to that point...the doomsday Democrats who are purposely trying to undermine Dean and in effect are hurting all Democrats beause a) the repukes will love to use this free material and say see? they are divided, don't even agree themselves and b) Democrats will become more fragmented or simply drop out of the process even more because they can't believe the things Joe is saying about a fellow Democrat (that are absolutely not true).

I certainly don't think you are a Bush-appeaser or any other derogatory terms you seem to think I called you. If your beef is with Jeter, sorry I don't visit DU often enough to understand everyone's personal animosities.

I just wish people would not take the stupid words of one or two people and use them as an example of how all Dean supporters think.

I don't hate Kerry, or even Lieberman as much as some of you seem to hate Dean. In fact, I don't "hate" any Democrat (Joe is getting awfully close to that category tho). I don't get it. But hey, it's your right.

No, I believe the definition of that action would be passive aggression, but I'm sure you wouldn't do anything as blatant as posting a personal insult in a title line and then trying to slither out of having said it while claiming some perceived victimhood of being tarred as an icky sort. You'd never cast aspersions of arrogant dickdom in my direction without having the fortitude to make the statement directly anymore than you'd try to marginalize me for being sneaky and not addressing gists of various statements.

Look, it's nauseating how members of factions can rage and flail at their opponents all they like but are somehow ethically immune from rebuke.

The simple fact is this: It's not everybody else's fault. That was the claim of the thread starter. Dean was the absolute worst with personal attacks, and now that he's reaping the response, his people have little right to complain. There's an underlying through-line that anyone genuinely concerned about him being the nominee is a obstructionist hater who just wants to destroy Dean and the party's chances. That's an outrage. Some of us have feelings, and after being constantly hectored as morally inferior, to then be blamed for any fallout from a shockingly shrill campaign is a bit much.

The gist of the statement was addressed in my initial post, and when the rhetorical device of "you're incapable to read" or "you're ducking the issue to grind your own axe" is used, no matter how indirectly and passive-aggressively, it deserves response.

Yes, many of Dean's detractors are out of line, but there are valid points against both his candidacy and character; to make the pronouncement that it's somehow a betrayal of all that's good and pure to stand up is galling.

I think you are wrong; I think Jeter was using extremist language to try to embarrass opposition and demonize opponents. I don't think it was a gentle musing of perceived reality; I think it was partisan outrage. A lot of that's understandable, but it's hardly sweetness and light, and it's hardly subtly qualified and accepting.

Yes, there is a lot going on here, but you're hardly a newcomer, so if you feed the flames, you're part of the hubbub too.

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There's only one candidate who's undeniably to the right of Dean at the moment; how do you explain that?

It's undemocratic to stand against the tsunami of sanctimoniousness?

Neener neener neener the others are inferior? Gosh.

If laziness means unwillingness to smear, rage and dismiss everyone else, then perhaps you overestimate the value of bashing as a tactic. Dean is a basher; he has been since the beginning. That turns lots of people off.

Worthy of accepting Bush as your President until 2008 to protect spineless and gutless establishment Dems.

I mean, seriously?

This isn't a joke. I don't think we have to panic with this premise; I simply don't agree. I guarantee you that if I thought this was the case, I'd be working for him. Should that time come, I will.

Please have some restraint about what you imply here; it'd be dastardly to take down the whole temple just out of dislike of any of the current Dems. I don't accuse the Deanies of that no matter how much the more strident ones revel in pushing buttons.

We do actually get to have a primary. It'll be short, and that's sad and monumentally stupid, but we should use it as the proving ground and laboratory that it is.

You don't know the future any more than I do, so please be mindful of that. Everyone runs foul of this mental trap at some time: we make a leap of logic and pronounce an assumption as fact; then when we see someone acting at odds with this "fact" we react accordingly. It's human nature again, our best friend and mortal enemy.

the contrary, the VAST majority of Dean supporters are all about ridding this nation of a deadly parasitic fungus named Bush.

Since the start of this election cycle, the Dean insurgency has been unfairly and wrongly characterized as fickle and potentially disloyal to the Democratic party unless Dean wins the nomination.

However, Dean and Dean's supporters are the ones who have led the charge against Bush and complicit Bush enablers, while at the same time revitalizing the grassroots of the Democratic party structure with newly organized, newly active and newly contributing blood.

All the Party establishment has done in response to this huge surge in Democratic activism is offer up the ultimate insider Corpocrat cipher running an DC-insider dominated campaign with a paper thin independent, outsider veneer. Meanwhile, they've been desperately striving to derail the energy and momentum of the most successful national grassroots campaign in US history.

In my opinion, Dean and Dean's supporters are far more loyal to the Dem Party and far more focused on ridding this country of Bush than Democratic insiders and their supporters who ironically pretend that their overriding problem with Dean is that he's not "electable" enough for them.

The media has given Bush an entirely free ride since 9/11. Because of this, most Americans are woefully uninformed about what a RESOUNDING FAILURE Bush's administration has been on all counts. Dean is uniquely positioned to devastatingly attack Bush from the left (war, civil rights), center (environment, healthcare, graft) and even the right (huge deficits, a borrow & spend mentality and no fiscal restraint).

Meanwhile, Dean's opponents and their supporters consistently ignore the fact that when it comes to any Dem beating Bush's ass, there's a critical strategic difference between arguing that your opponents are too similar to the continually blundering Bush (as Dean has argued) and propping up Bush and his sack of transparently disgusting lies by pretending that your opponent's strident opposition to Bush's indefensibly miserable policies and craven stunts somehow makes him unelectable.

Furthermore, while I believe that well over 80% of Dean's supporters will keep actively working to oust Bush no matter what, the unbridled enthusiasm with which Dean's opponents and their supporters have acted to Rovianly undermine Dean's chances in the general election has me seriously wondering if they see a Dean Presidency as far greater threat than another 4 years of His Lowness. And, quite frankly, the rapidly accumulating evidence backing this dire conclusion makes me violently sick to my stomach.

Life is much more amorphous and qualified than most are willing to accept; that's why those who are scared of thinking will always demand things to be black and white. It's a self-defense mechanism.

If altruism's truly to be in play--and practicality is a form of altruism, mind you--an element of selflessness and openness needs to be maintained. Sentiment kills, yet it's everything, and without it, life would be less than pointless.

Yes, Dean AND the supporters and strategists like Trippi kindled a fire and were the seed crystal for a very invigorating movement. Does that mean we OWE it to Howard Dean to be the nominee? Stick with me, here, Fido, there's no whammy coming. The movement and the people are the thing; the standard bearer is important, but not AS important. Look at it this way: there was seething energy against the war and against the seemingly flaccid Dems in Congress that just happened to coincide with the beginning of the campaign. Perhaps Dean just happened to be the one who's take on one very important issue made him the point of condensation. (His early stance was iffy, though, and he didn't have to negotiate it and stand for a vote.) Nonetheless, he deserves credit, and yet he's got his faults, too.

Is he the movement? No. Is the movement him? No. Is he an unquestionable lightning rod of a certain important energy? Yes. Am I sick of Rumsfeldian rhetorical self-dialogue? You tell me. Is he necessarily the best one for the job? I don't think so. Is he the one with the best chance to win? He might be, but then again, he might really stumble or be overtaken by events. I don't think he has the best chance, and since there are others more akin to my social liberalism who I think have a better chance, that's why I'm where I am on this.

The point here is that the one who is the best for the country and the best for the much-beleaguered rest of the world should be the President, with the only caveat of practicality being that we're sure he/she has a really really really solid chance to win and there's no other with a MUCH better chance who's also acceptable.

The election's two things: first, we need to convince ourselves who's best, and then we need to convince the whole country. Let the primaries play as they should. I'm upset with Dean, but I'm a bit of a puritan on a few subjects that are his weak points, so I admit my prejudices; his is a personality type I've always had trouble with. This personality type has great strengths and great weaknesses, and at the moment, the latter are looking very foreboding for a general election.

The election has to be above every individual, including the candidate for President. The stakes are very high. Most of these conversations are inherently useful, and rushing to a conclusion is a supremely bad idea. What the Deanies want to do now--like any momentary leader wants to do--is sit on the ball and run out the clock. That's what happened in Florida in '00, and it works in the short run. This is not a cryptic comparison between Junior and Dean, but an example of a short-term mistake. Had Junior not been seated, it might have moderated the Republicans a bit and they could have come back in
'04 and really taken the place over for a long time. As it is, by forcing their way through when the country really didn't want them, their brand of extremism may have angered enough people that the Republicans will be roundly smacked. See what I'm getting at? We may have a more broadly appealing and healing person at hand than Dean, and to not give ourselves the time to point that out to each other, could saddle us with a one term President who pisses off so many people so the Republicans sweep back into power in '08 for years to come.

We don't owe it to him, we owe it to ourselves to figure out the best guy. A lot of shouting has gone on about the various players here, and many of their virtues have been crushed under misrepresentation and factionalism. There's a feeling of entitlement swirling about many of the Deanies, and I don't think it's deserved. Some of these other candidates are honorable, courageous, dedicated and appealing. I guarantee you that much of the movement will move to one if he's nominated.

History teaches us a lot if we listen; one of the biggest mistakes that constantly recurs is: "but this is different; the rules don't apply". No, humanity's more of a constant than many think; that's why communism failed: we're not perfectable. The pertinent point here is that firebrands do horribly in getting elected because they piss off too many people. The Doctor has this in spades, and it's trouble. Sure it's invigorating, and it will bring in non-voters, but I see it as a major problem. Yes, I think sucking up to the crossover vote is idiotic and has damn near neutered the party, but that's not what I mean.

It's a personality and character issue more than anything else. It would be a problem for me even if I was more in tune with his politics (too centrist for me) and trusted his instincts more. That latter's a killer: he has the capacity to shoot himself in the foot like nobody I've ever seen. Yeah, it's exciting, but it's like motorcycle riding: you only have to fuck up once.

Nice of you to be nice, and nice to actually get to some meat in the middle of all this frenzy, but explore some of my contentions with your peers and non-peer friends and family, especially the firebrand issue. There are many others saying similar things, and that generally means there's something to it.

uncomprehending, yes.

knee jerk to corporate media punditry, yes.

Without a clue as to how to put your candidate in the lead, yes.
But unworthy? No.

Don't worry, these folks just know the end is coming for them.

Here's to President Dean.


Oh, and here's a pic for all you lovely Clark supporters :hi:

And look just how much that rebel flag comment hurt him :hi:

He's now leading nationally, double digits, leads in NH, Iowa, Arizona, Washington, California and just retook the lead, of all places, in SC. :hi:


God, the truth really does hurt if you're a Clark supporter, huh?


:hi:

:-(

It is repugnant to me that these candidates declare things like 'Dean can't win' and that they attack him with all sorts of charges that are completely ridiculous (e.g., 'changes his position'. Oh yeah? Any more than any other politician?)

Politics has descended to a new low. A gibbering chimp in the White House. A twisted Cardinal Richelieu type in Karl Rove. A Heinrich Himmler type in Cheney. All of this in a nation of empty ditto heads. And a Democratic party consisting of self-serving types that burn all their bridges when they declare how 'terrible' another candidate is, instead of just saying, 'Here is what I believe and how I would handle things.'

Just sickening.

And, you know what? I still think Howard Dean will win the nomination and will win the presidency. A lot will happen between now and November.

I'm sorry..
and I like dean really..

just when you have some idiot like that guy above..ugghh

Webkev, you called me an idiot for stating my disgust at the attacks on Dean and for declaring my belief that Dean will win the presidency.

Well, I forgive you (though I would point out to you that personal attacks are against the new rules of the board).

And I still think that Dean has the kind of vision that will connect with the American voter.

'dean will win'?

I either post a rebuttal or ignore it.

Why are so many Dean supporters whining all the time.

instead of just rebutting or ignoring it?

demand DU'ers and ALL of humanity denounce despicable ads or even Zogby push polls.

...

...

...


What's wrong...can't you find one?

The more Dean gets picked on, the more all of us Deanies rally to his side and he raises more money

They've been coming at him for months and he doesn't cave. Double digit lead nationally, up 29 in NH, takes the lead (barely) in SC *after* The Capture.

Hone the arguments here. Half a million people have Dean's back.

With ALL the publicity he's gotten & all the publicity his opponenets HAVEN'T gotten, the ads he's put up on tv, the money he's raked in from his core.

by spending less money than some. Gep and Kerry have both outspent him, I believe.

What he's doing is working. So far. *X fingers* (and donate as able)

or belittled by the media... sorry, but Dean's performance is underwhelming.

And he still only garners about 20% of voter's support.

with MASS media attention. He even LED briefly. Sorry, but you can't blame Dean for that. Dean is trending up and that has been consistent. We still don't know for sure but...

:shrug:

I just get busy countering arguments.

I am also not the one trying to blame others for whatever missteps my Candidate or his campaign may or may not have made.

Dean is a weak candidate for the General Election in many respects... and he has severe flaws in his campaign.

So it will not be anyone's fault but Dean & Trippi's if Dean loses.... the primaries or the General.

:eyes:

DTH

But to those off in the distance it just sounds like a bunch of people chanting "Dean,Dean,Dean,Dean,Dean,Dean,Dean,Dean!"

And then Dean grows stronger.

That's the irony. These attacks help Dean. He came out of no where. But by making this Governor the center of attention all the time, his opponents help him more than any ad or the whole media combined.

to almost any question into another attack on Bush, or his Democratic opponents.

He is a wonder to behold.

name recognition.

Oh look, they attacked DEAN!

Who attacked DEAN?

One of the OTHERS...

Marsha! Marsha! Marsha!

but they are attacking the whole party. If he gets the nomination the videos they are making today will be run against him in the national campaign.

. . prepared the Dean supporters to blame someone else if Dean loses.

The Dems will all back him. Even Lieberman told Tweety this on yesterday's show. Then the also-rans will have to eat their words. Too bad their words will have given the repukes a lot of ammo to attack Dean with.

bush will get another four years.

There have been some extremely vicious attacks on Clark as well, and they only make my support stronger. I wish that people would realize that you don't persuade anyone to support your candidate by attacking theirs, you only alienate them and close their minds to hearing anything positive about you own candidate. I've been lurking for a long time, and have never seen things look so ugly here. Sometimes I wonder if people here will even be able to speak to each other after the nominee is chosen.

Dean can only lose if the Borg assimilate us all and cancel all elections

then go with it. But if Dean loses it will be because of Dean.

If Dean gets the nomination and loses, his more zombified supporters will blame, with great buttloads of self-righteousness, precisely the people who warned them that Dean wasn't a strong candidate. "See? They didn't *believe* and Tinkerbell is dead. DEAD!"

Faith-based politics. I'll take rational analysis and a sense of history, thanks.

With the exception of Clark, the candidates who keep claiming that Dean can't win seem to be determined to do whatever they can to make that happen. I'm curious to see what they will have to say when Dean actually does win.

I especially love all the Dean can't win folks talking about where the nominee is from (south versus everywhere else) or too liberal/conservative....

This is just bad science...but they don't know it cause hey...in America, everyone's entitled to their opinion...even if it is woefully uninformed....

You see folks.....i've explained this several times...and it has been consistently ignored....but you cant use past party nominees as an indicator for future succees...for several reasons....

1) Many using the southerner tactic.....not a large enough N to make any prediction worth anything....

2) No variation on the variable....you see, all the candidates who have lost election were Democratic Party nominees and all the candidates who have won have been.....wait for it.....Democratic Party nominees....

3) Because of the small number of elections, the number of viariables that match up across all elections is almost nonexistant....and if you go too far back, the nature of the parties don't match up...

So after all this I guess I am saying....give me a figgin break! Too many pocket scientist go around DU pontificating about what variables they seem to think is soo damn important without fully understanding the scientific process and what correct inferences can be drawn from past presidential elections....

Get over it...work hard for your candidate...and everything will take care of itself...

Just as it would be with ANY OTHER DEMOCRAT! Where's the responsibility for one's actions? He can respond to any attacks (or not), run a positive or negative campaign, it's up to him and his campaign how he does this. If the voters like it, he will be elected. If they don't, he won't be elected. The ultimate responsibilty lies with the Dean and his campaign, should he be the nominee.

Every front runner in every contested primary campaign is hit like this. Your sense of panic suggests you haven't seen many presidential primaries?

..and I do believe he will not only lose but lose badly, it will be because the primary voting, active base of the Democratic Party had lost its collective mind in nominating him in the first place.

We are about to nominate someone who's claim to fame in the minds of most voters will be opposition to the war in Iraq and tax increases that will include the middle class.

This is a recipe for disaster in 2004. Promising tax increases alone probably helped doom Mondale in 84'. McGovern ran as an anti-war candidate at a time most people were ready to get out of Vietnam anyway, and he still got his ass kicked.

I don't care how people try to sugarcoat it or make excuses for how this time will be different - a majority of Americans will NOT vote for anti-war candidate promising tax hikes. They just won't.

We are on the cusp of total defeat in 2004 if we do not make the right choices now. The economy IS improving. Whining that the numbers are cooked and silly anecdotal evidence of people complaining about the job market does not change the fact that virtually every economic indicator is showing a very strong economy in 04'. Banging away on the declining value of the dollar just doesn't have a bit of effect on most Americans because, at least in the short run, it does not hurt them at all.

This election is shaping up to look more like 84' than 92'. Bush is a very strong candidate. He will be very, very hard to beat. The Democratic Party is about to nominate a person with policy positions that make him nearly unelectable nationally.

I see the writing on the wall. I do not think anything can stop Dean now, and I think there is a good chance that Bush and the Republicans will win very big in 04' which will be disasterous for this country.

I am going to vote for Dean come election time. Mark my words though, this nominee will lose the entire South so badly that we may well lose every single open Southern senate seat (that alone is plus 5 in the GOP column). With Dean at the top of the ticket, the Democratic Party is in danger of losing in a landslide on a scale that could leave us irrelevent in American politics.

And when my predictions come to reality, I am going to post a big "I told you so" while I am crying in my beer.

Imajika

I think your analysis is spot-on, as usual.

DTH

Dean is in the best position, by far, to expose him for the incompetent mafia figurehead he is.

If you're actually resigned to Dean's nomination, you'd do a lot better to join his campaign and attempt to strengthen it than to sit back waiting to cry in your beer while mouthing "I told you so."

I will not vote for any candidate who is playing Lee Atwater destruction politics on fellow Democrats. Saying you're better than another guy in a primary is fine. Saying the other guy is Osama Bin Laden, or enabled Saddam Hussein is way over the fucking line.

I will not vote for any candidate who in any way supports PNAC.

I will not vote for any candidate who believes the invasion of Iraq, as it was done by the Bush Criminal Empire, was the right thing to do. I'm not even neccessarily talking about voting for the resolution - though I'm not crazy about that either. The resolution carried with it an assumption that Bush would prove his case. But when he didn't, he went in anyway. So I won't fault a vote on that as a "dealbreaker", but I will somone who thinks it was STILL a great idea now. After 450 or so Americans killed and god knows how many wounded. After Husseins kids are killed, and him captured, yet the violence continues.

I would much rather vote for the candidates who don't have a chance in Hell of winning, but at least who haven't taken any of the indefensible positions above. Fortunately I won't have to. Because Howard Dean's gonna be the nominee, and the next President of the United States of America. And the PNAC tagalongs can just get the Hell out of the party now, because you'll be tossed out soon anyway :-)

to sign it too. I will not cast a vote for Howard "NRA" Dean. To me a perfect approval rating from the NRA is appalling. Also he disgraced our veterans by skiing after getting a medical deferment from Viet Nam. The moral thing to do would to have volunteered for for some stateside or desk assignment. I refuse to vote for him.

Who needs Repukes when Dems do all the work for them?

Dean vs whining Democrats. Dean has his work cut out for him.

He and his supporters should know what they are getting into going up against Rove and the Corporate Media. If he loses they will have to face the recriminations that are sure to come afterward.

are not at all prepared for what Rove and the state press will do.

I don't like nasty primaries either, but this stuff pales into insignificance compared to what the Republicans and their propaganda network will do. Can we just call on them to "denounce" it all? Will that work? Is there a supermoderator who can delete their attacks? Will trying to appeal to Bush's human decency do the job?

There's much, much worse coming, worse even than the sleazy Dean/Osama ad.

Maybe it would all go away.

Whether in the primary or out of it. They all know the system, they can't cry about the game because they can't play it well. So Dean will shoulder some blame if he loses the GE, and all those Dem candidates that lose the primary will shoulder blame for their own losses. Let's take some responsibility, and not project blame.

I'm glad good common sense politicians are tearing Dean a new one.

by the other dems. The war was not a good decision whether we got Saddam or not. I'm also against Dean on a pedestal.

I guess you havent been watching anything other then the positive Major Media spin on Dean. How about the constant blackballing of the other candidates?

Why can't you understand what so many people are speaking and thinking of Dean? This is a man that wants to take the Democratic party away from what Bill Clinton has brought to us. I and many like me don't want to have ANYTHING to do with Dean.

If anyone here slacks for 2 seconds because they did not get "their guy" the nom then they should never complain about Bush ever again. We will see how many of the people who showed up here for the primaries stay after they are done. I have a feeling we will not have many of them here to help work towards our goals.

jeter & Friends,

Jeter, I think you are exactly right. What we're seeing here--first hand, unfortunately--is presidential fever(something like a psychosis), and how it makes otherwise reasonable candidates act when they can smell that their best efforts aren't working for them.

Some of them are showing us gaping character flaws as they flail about making outrageous charges and accusations in the impotent hope that some how, no matter how, they can salvage their blasted hopes.

Unlike almost all of us on this forum, they don't even see how desperate the situation actually is with encroaching "corporatism" in this country... in at least some cases, because they have been too long at the trough themselves.

Frankly,(and I'm serious here), I'm glad it's happening now. Leiberman, for example, is going to wake up one morning soon with a pounding headache, asking himself "how did I get here". From my personal point of view, at least for Leiberman, it will be too late.

I think he is squandering all the respect that's accrued to him by accompagnying Gore on his Last Hurrah. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we're witnessing the beginning of Leiberman's Last Hurrah, but that will be better left to Conn. voters. I am sure, however, that his "back room" power that might have been exercized at the Dem nominating convention is surely self distructing as part of his current sad show.

Well, welcome to the freak show, and just be glad that all this stuff isn't taking place out under the Big Top.

eric

Only Howard Dean can make words come out Howard Dean's mouth, only Howard Dean can make Howard Dean take actions. If those words and/or actions don't curry favor, do not attempt to lay blame on anyone other than Howard Dean. Its just nonsensical.

Dean is God! Dean is God! Dean is God!


...not.

I don't want Dean because I feel in my heart of hearts he would lose horribly.

I DO NOT fell that way about all the Dem candidates.

I think Clark is the best contender
I think Kerry could win
I think Edwards could win
I (shudder) even think Lieberman would have a chance, slim, but there.

I think Dean would LOSE. That's why I do not support him.

So you see I don't "hate Dean for his success". That's asinine. It's like saying "they hate us for our freedoms". Meaningless. I don't even hate Dean. I just don't want him as the nominee.

it will be the fault of the people who tried to warn us.

Nice try, it will be because Haoward Dean can't beat george bush in 2004.

Guess what? Lunz knows it. Tweety Knows it. Crowley knows it. Fineman knows it. That's why, like you, they blatantly support Dean for the nomination.

Well, that is certainly the intended effect of a Dean discussion by those who don't want to nominate him.
I'm glad to see progress.

won't win the GE because they truly don't stand for anything outside of "the center"

They simply won't get left-leaning people to come out and vote for for them and thus hand the election to GW, once again.

"If You Want To Rock The Vote, You Have To Rock The Boat."
-Dennis Kucinich www.kucinich.us

n/t

you say if Dean loses it will be becasue of the attacks, then you say Dean is getting stronger because of the attacks. Which is it?Make up your mind.

base hated Bush so he called the opponents "Bushlite" even though his record was much closer to Bush's conservatism than any of those he accused.

Dean is a distorter and a deceiver and all of this will be exposed in RNC ads just in time for the entire Dem party to bear the cost of having someone like Dean as the face of the party.

cute ;)

And if you can provide ONE stump speech of Dean's where he honestly laid out the little difference between his position and Kerry's then I'll gratefully change my view. Till then I see that he exaggerated the difference to attack others and glorify himself dishonestly.And I'll bet more than a few REAL antiwar Kucinich supporters agree.

the liberal Democratic base had condemned those betrayers to the deepest circle of hell.

:hi:

After he wins the primary they say he will easily move to the middle.It's the marketing for the primary that makes him look like a liberal. This Dean is one of the worst hypocrites in the Democratic party. 10% of Vermont voters voted for someone more liberal in his last race but he has conned America into thinking he's some progressive activist when in reality he just became anti-war to differentiate himself as a product. Truly a digusting individual. The Confederate flag flap should have been expected from this shameless panderer.