I’ve been accused repeatedly, especially recently, of being blindly partisan. The conventional wisdom is that I would never criticize anyone on “my side” of the ideological fence.
Well hold onto your hats, because I think Howard Dean has done something extremely wrong.
In an e-mail to me and thousands of other supporters last Thursday, Dean wrote:
“We will get a boost this weekend in Washington, Michigan and Maine, but our true test will be the Wisconsin primary. A win there will carry us to the big states of March 2 and narrow the field to two candidates. Anything less will put us out of this race.”
In the same e-mail they put up one of the Dean fundraising “bats,” and raised more than the $700,000 goal in a single day to pay for ads and more campaigning in Wisconsin. I myself “hit the bat” again because of this e-mail.
And now Dean says he won’t quit the race after Wisconsin, no matter what happens.
This is wrong on so many levels. The worst is, he goes back on an important promise. And integrity and honesty have been Dean’s calling cards all along. But there are other problems: it makes the “bat” seem like a cheap fundraising trick. It sets Dean up for some sort of Perot-like opposition campaign, which can only hurt. It makes it easy for Republicans to laugh at Dean as a Clintonesque language-parsing “depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” Democrat.
All of this sucks, and it’s no one’s fault but Dean’s. If he doesn’t win Wisconsin (and the polls are not smiling on him here), he should get out. I want him to be a force for reform in the party, not a spoiler. He has a chance to make at least some lemonade out of this situation – I hope he still can.
No need to be vicious.
Your point is valid, but remember that responding to conservative accusations of partisanship does two things:
1) it allows the conservative to frame the debate; and
2) it allows the conservative to avoid talking about his own obvious partisanship.
The assumption beneath arguments like Mosey’s goes something like this: “I’m an independent thinker who chose Bush because I thought he was the best man for the job. You are a hateful demagogue who despises conservatives and who would vote for a piece of Pumpernickel toast before re-electing who I believe is the right man for the country.”
You think you’re arguing with an equal. He doesn’t.
And no matter that he would probably vote for Lyndon LaRouche before voting for any Democrat at any time for any reason — those aren’t the choices before us, and so he is the well-reasoned thoughtful moderate and you’re the radical leftie who wants the SCOTUS to tell all of us how to tie our shoes.
You’re obviously just trying to justify your hatred for Dean…I, uh–wha? Where am I? 10 o’clock already?? Gotta go…
I’m not sure how Dean can turn things around. Then again, I can’t understand how Kerry is leading.
At this point, I think Dean should be the sacrificial lamb that speaks his mind and frames the issues that will bring dubya down. If that means staying in the race in order to have a pulpit, he should stay in. If that means getting out to give Kerry the spotlight but remain a sideline commentator, he should do that. The priority needs to be Anybody But Bush at this point, and Dean can still play a major role in making that happen.
Adam and Arthur both make good points. I agree that Dean has bungled this one–you can’t set a firm deadline *and* keep your options open at the same time. He should have picked one course and stuck with it.
Although I will still vote for him next week, I do think it’s close to over for him. At some point, he will have to put aside his own ambition and just support Kerry (as he has pledged to do in the past, although he’s taken some nasty jabs at Kerry recently). We need to limit our Democratic infighting and make absolutely sure Bush is, like his papa, a one-term president. This country can’t take another 4 years of Dubya…
He claims he’s staying in because “a lot” of his supporters begged him to. If I were a Dean supporter, it wouldn’t really bother me — it’s probably for the good that he stays in — but I think I would be bothered by the waste of $40 mil. I guess if it had worked, pundits would be saying what a brilliant strategy it was, but it just seems so reckless and wasteful now — there was no Plan B. He didn’t even have a concession speech prepared for Iowa.
John, an excellent example of, oh, whats the technical term?
Oh yeah, Making shit up on someone’s behalf, then arguing against it with the flaws you alredy put in and declaring yourself the winner.
For the record I never said I would vote for Bush (probably the extra spooky Gary Nolan), or not vote for a Democrat (which I have many times), but a great try. I hope it made you feel better because it doesn’t change any of the things I said.
Adam: Not quite sure why this particular Deanism sticks I your craw, he somehow imploded on a level we haven’t see since Gart Hart, and there is no Monkey Business this time. I think his rabid supporters were a ton of “talk loud and stay home” types, like NORMAL supporters and the like.
Somewhere that loud voice and true thought he had got well overshadowed by, “whoa, crazy man ranting.” I kind of hope he drops out in Wisconsin, only because I am pretty sure he is one third place away from climbing up on a watertower and pretending he is Batman or something.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30312-2004Feb10.html
I can’t see him doing any kind of Nader/Perot style spoiler thing, he doesn’t seem *that* passionate or crazy. Then again, I never thought anyone would stand behind Kerry instead of Dean.
I don’t remember DEAN saying he’d quit the race – saying that it would be “over” if he didnt win Wisconsin isn’t quite the same thing as saying he’d quit. Regardless of that ( but I’d love clarification on the point, if anyone can point me to his original statements regarding leaving the race) I would like him and Edwards to stay in the race at least until the next debate. While I believe the nominating campaign was over as of Tuesday night – I’d like to see the “losers” challenge Kerry in the debate — not the typical nit-picking – but more “Mr Kerry – how do you plan to clean up the budget mess? Mr Kerry, how do you plan to get more Americans health care if you have a Republican congress? Mr Kerry, how do you plan on implimenting your promise to end DONT ASK DONT TELL with a Republican Congress? etc., etc. Most of us havent voted yet, and I’d like to see more substantive discussions before we sow this nomination process up.
I can’t remember when he said it, but he did say that if he didn’t win X primary, he’d drop out and support whoever Democratic voters picked as their guy. He said, I’ll vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is. If that doesn’t mean he’s dropping out, I don’t know what else it means.
The fact that Mosey can’t really express what he’s *for*, as he’s too busy griping on Adam about what he’s *against, doesn’t invalidate what I wrote above. Don’t accept invitations to debate on uneven ground. Don’t go on The O’Reilly Factor, whether metaphorically or actually.
John, is your entire argument always going to be putting words into my mouth and then arguing against them, or would you planning on actually reading some of it. And inf fact, it entirely invalidates what you said above because you flat out made it up (that’s called a lie in the real world) and then argued against it.
You might want to learn words like “can’t” also.
As in “you can’t kiss my ass” as opposed to “you won’t kiss my ass.”
bj: Now that you mention it I don’t remember a quote from Dean sying he’d drop out, so I looked it up to see if he said it or everyone inferred it.
“The entire race has come down to this: We must win Wisconsin,” Dean said Thursday in an e-mail to supporters. “Anything less will put us out of this race.”
He didn’t say he’d drop out, he said he couldn’t win. Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t stick around a la Al Sharpton to make sure Kerry stays honest.
When asked if he meant he would drop out he said, “It’s a moot point because we are going to win Wisconsin” which is political speak for “my options are open.”
I looked in a few articles and didn’t see “I will drop out…” or anything, just “it will be over” which is different (and not an what the meaning of “is” is thing).
So maybe he never said it, everyone just thought he did (hey! imagine that!)
I heard you said you eat babies.
By the looks of the front page of the Drudgereport this morning, there might be a little movin’ and shakin’ in this race, well beyond Wisconsin.
I think it’s a little pedantic to hang on the words of politicians. Isn’t it obvious that skilled politicians will craft messages that can be re-worked into different messages with the plausible deniability of saying your message hasn’t changed?
Who *cares* if Dean drops out or not? He started as an outisder, and might continue as an outsider and Democratic gadfly, if it suits his purposes (as there’s little word of what he’ll do post-race). He still has a message that can benefit the Democratic party, or at the very least people who want to see Bush out of office, and a reluctance to drop out completely might be his way of saying that message will still be relevant long after Kerry wins the nomination, the certainty of which is being inflated by a lazy press who just wants to know who they’re covering.
But in the long run, Dean doesn’t have the constituency or the long-term finances to act as a third-party wedge. His supporters will almost certainly back Kerry when push comes to shove, and if the Democratic party rediscovers some of its liberal working-class values, then what of it?