The Progressive Case for Dean

by Nico Pitney

I passionately supported the Greens in 2000 and 2002. I traveled 125 miles to see Dennis Kucinich speak when he came to Los Angeles in May, and had the pleasure of introducing him to a crowd of several hundred when he spoke in Santa Barbara recently. Kucinich is a guiding light in Congress and, of the nine Democratic presidential contenders, his views most closely mirror my own.

Yet I won't be voting for Kucinich in the Democratic primaries, nor will I vote Green in the general elections. My support will go to Howard Dean.

"Yes, I've read the unfavorable commentaries on Howard Dean by writers whose opinions I greatly respect, like Norman Solomon and Alexander Cockburn. And yes, I know that I disagree with some critical components of Dean's platform. Progressives should be well aware that they're going to disagree on a range of issues with every individual who has a chance at being in the White House two years from now. Our choice is not between Howard Dean and the-even-better-candidate-who-has-a-shot-at-winning-the-Democratic-nomination-and-defeating-George-Bush; that other candidate doesn't exist. Neither Kucinich nor Al Sharpton nor Carol Moseley Braun nor any Green will be President. Progressives should incorporate this reality into their electoral strategy, however disappointing it may be."

and...

"Unfortunately, most left-leaning commentators have written about Dean as though their responsibility was to lead the well-intentioned but misguided progressive flock away from his campaign, implicitly and sometimes explicitly asserting that supporters have jumped on Dean's bandwagon without seriously considering his record. Antiwar.com's Anthony Gancarski "wonders if the Dean supporters are following their candidate blindly, without knowledge of the full spectrum of his positions." Potential Green presidential candidate Carol Miller told NBC News that she feels "sorry for those people when they learn who the real Howard Dean is."

Putting aside the patriarchal presumptuousness of such sentiments, they're also wildly ironic: the overwhelming majority of claims that Dean is a far-left candidate come from conservatives who are clearly attempting to marginalize one of the two prominent Democratic candidates. Almost without exception, right-wing commentaries on Dean compare his campaign to McGovern's and brand Dean as an "extreme leftist" whose support is built predominantly on activists' antiwar sentiment. Rush Limbaugh recently warned his listeners about a shift he perceived in mainstream press reports on Dean: "Have you noticed how some in the press are starting to say Howard Dean is not that liberal? Keep a sharp eye out for that, because the left knows that being a far left, progressive liberal is a killer, so they're going to try to paint the picture of Dean as a moderate." Surprisingly enough, one of the few prominent progressives to make a substantive link between Dean and Kucinich was Ralph Nader, who noted that Bush "is very vulnerable but not if you campaign the way the major candidates - except for Dean and Kucinich - are campaigning."

Read on here....

http://deandefense.org/archives/000596.html