Howie, We Hardly Knew Ye - An Elegy for Governor Dean
by Ted Rall
Link to ArticleAt least they didn't shoot Howard Dean (news - web sites). Usually, when an American political figure speaks truth to power, he ends up conveniently dead. RFK, Malcolm X, some say Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone: all martyrs to the quaint ideal of telling it as it is as loudly as possible. Like them, Dean scared the establishment. His aggressive style roused youngsters whom aging Boomers prefer to see somnolent. His populist Internet-based fundraising freed him from the corporate donors whose influence keeps the citizens of the world's richest nation living under a Third World system of social protections. Al Gore (news - web sites)'s endorsement transformed a candidate who came out of nowhere (Vermont) into a genuine threat to the southern conservatives who have hijacked the Democratic Party since 1992. Dean was a pro-business moderate, yet he stood poised to radically transform both his party and the American political system.Of course he had to go. The same journalists who issued get-out-of-scrutiny passes to George W. Bush for everything from electoral fraud to assassinating U.S. citizens he declares "enemy combatants" to lying about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction nailed Dean for, of all things, "screaming" into a microphone the night he lost the Iowa caucuses. (For the record, those in the audience say, they could barely hear him over the din of the crowd.) The Hotline political newsletter reported that national TV news programs aired Dean's "I Have a Scream" speech 633 times within four days--and that's not counting local news or talk shows. Even Roger Ailes, the right-wing svengali pulling the strings at Fox News, conceded that it was "overplayed a bit." According to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, only 39 percent of Dean's coverage was positive during the following week, compared to 86 percent for John Edwards (news - web sites) and 71 percent for current frontrunner John Kerry (news - web sites). One indignity followed another--all because, God forbid, the guy got a tad rambunctious. "Is Dean Too Angry?" headlines spread across the nation. DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe, who refused to run interference for Dean when he was leading the pack, stepped into the fray to protect Kerry. "Democrats are still so angry about Al Gore's loss in 2000 and the Iraq (news - web sites) war that they simply will not stand for intramural squabbling," the New York Times quoted McAuliffe on February 17. "I'd much rather have a unified party with money in the bank." (He was singing a different tune in December.) Dean has the second largest number of delegates, yet the media refers to Edwards as Kerry's principal challenger.McAuliffe has a simple explanation for Kerry's string of victories. "Voters said, 'We want someone who is electable,'" he said. Democratic primary voters, however, have no way to know what brand of Democrat appeals to a swing voter. Most Democrats, determined to get rid of Bush, simply supported the contender who seemed most likely to win the nomination. Dean emerged as the early favorite, but anyone could see that his own party leadership had it in for him, going so far as to promote General Wesley Clark (news - web sites) as the "anti-Dean." The press dealt the coup de grace after Iowa. That left Kerry, the official DLC candidate, as the most viable alternative. Judging by Kerry's unwillingness to go for the jugular on Bush's AWOL year and his waffling on gay marriage, Dean would probably have been the more electable Democrat come this fall. I suspect that his integrity and intelligence would have made him a finer president. I also suspect that many of his fired-up supporters will ignore the abandon-hope message of the Times' astonishingly condescending February 1 editorial, "Come Home, Little Deaniacs." Kerry's opportunism notwithstanding--voting for the Iraq war when it was popular, voting against funding the occupation when it wasn't--pulling the lever for Michael Dukakis' ex-number two is about as thrilling as swallowing medicine. A lot of Deanies will suck it up in November; others will stay home. As a charter member of the "Anybody But Bush" club, I will of course pull a lever for John Kerry in November. I can't say I'll do it with relish, but it'll be any easy decision nonetheless. Kerry looks like a basset hound and sounds like a moose and he'll make a marked improvement over the neofascist we've got now. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. If you have accounts on these bookmarking sites, you can post this story to share it with others.
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