Nation-Building

Time to go out on a limb, I predict that Dean is going to sweep New Hampshire. Read this great article from SevenDaysVT (sent by reader Amanda Tempel) for a really eye-opening glimpse into teh energy that surrounds Dean as he goes on teh trail (and in comparison to the other candidates, especially anemic Lieberman):

“You know why it is that only 18 percent of kids between the age of 18 and 25 vote? Because we don’t give them anything to vote for,” Dean tells the audience. “You know why less than 50 percent of all adults in America vote? It’s because they can’t tell the difference between the parties. If we don’t stand up for what we believe in, why should any American be drawn to the Democratic Party?”
...
When it came to attacking inside-the-Beltway politics, Dean pulled no punches, which only reinforced his persona as the Washington outsider. “Here’s what’s the matter with our party,” he intoned. “The president wants to give his campaign contributors $670 billion in additional tax cuts, and instead of asking, ‘Can we afford this when we have the biggest deficit in the history of the country?’ our folks say, ‘No, it should only be $136 billion.’ We’ve already lost the argument.”

Then he pulled out a great image on universal health insurance. “I want white guys who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back to vote Democratic because they have no health insurance, either,” he told the room

There's a lot more to this article than this though - check it out...

Continue reading/discuss Dean owns New Hampshire ...

Howard Dean will be on Meet the Press this Sunday. Here is the Capital Report transcript from a few nights ago (sorry, no link):

Interview Transcript

Show: Capital Report, CNBC, Tuesday 3/4/03 9:00 p.m. EST

Alan Murray, CNBC Washington Bureau Chief (AM): Welcome back to Capital Report. I don’t know about you, Gloria, but I am not ready for Presidential politics--

Gloria Borger, US News & World Report (GB): I am.

AM: I bet you are. But the Democratic candidates are already lining up at the gate.

GB: And Alan, they’re talking about war. And we’ve got with us former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who thinks it’s a bad idea. Welcome, Governor Dean--

Former Vermont Governor Dr. Howard Dean (HD): Thanks for having me on.

GB: -- to Capital Reports. Thank you for coming on my first show.

HD: Your first show. It’s a big event. It is—for all of us.

GB: Thank you very much. Do you agree with Senator McCain, who seemed to be saying that the administration was downplaying North Korea because it’s preoccupied with Iraq?

HD: I think Senator McCain is absolutely right. I think North Korea is a full-blown crisis. This is a country that does represent an immediate threat, an imminent threat to the United States, should they develop nuclear weapons. Much more so than Saddam Hussein. I think the priorities of this administration are simply misplaced.

AM: If you are President of the United States, what do you do about North Korea?

HD: You begin by talking to them. I disagree with Secretary Powell. I think that we should engage in bilateral discussions with North Korea. As Yitzak Rabin said, when he shook hands with Arafat on the lawn of the White House in 1995, “You don’t make peace with your friends.” It’s important for us first to begin talking. I would then negotiate an agreement where they would stop in their tracks, and we would—

AM: Well, we did this before. It didn’t work.

HD: It didn’t work because it wasn’t verified and it wasn’t followed up, and it needs to be verified and followed up. The stakes are too great. They are perhaps months away from developing a credible nuclear threat to the United States. This is an urgent crisis. We are not paying attention to it. We need to pay attention to it.

GB: Can you imagine any situation wherein, as President of the United States, faced with the situation we have with Iraq right now, that you would make a unilateral decision to invade Iraq?

HD: Sure. What I’ve said is that if Iraq or any other country poses an imminent threat to the United States, we have a right to defend ourselves.

GB: Isn’t this imminent? Don’t you think this is imminent?

HD: How is Iraq a threat to the United States?

AM: Well, they have stockpiles of VX nerve gas. They have stockpiles of biological agents.

HD: They’ve had these stockpiles for many, many years. Here’s the conditions under which I believe Iraq becomes an imminent threat to the United States: One, they possess nuclear weapons, which North Korea is about to do on this President’s watch. Two, they have a credible nuclear program, which there’s very little evidence that they have.

GB: Well, we don’t know.

HD: We don’t believe they have, and nobody’s made a good case for it. And three, I don’t think the Secretary has made the case that they are giving weapons of mass destruction to the terrorists, which also would be an imminent threat to the United States. On the other hand, we have Korea, with the North Koreans, which is clearly about to develop a nuclear weapons capability. That is an imminent threat, and we’re doing very little about it.

GB: So would you set a deadline? If you were facing this United Nations problem right now, would you set a deadline and say the inspectors have to be done by x, or then we’ll go in?

HD: The United Nations’ job is to disarm Saddam Hussein. We have contained Saddam Hussein for twelve years, successfully, at a cost of 30 billion dollars. Now the President wants to spend 90 or 100 billion when he won’t give 5 billion to the states for Homeland Security. I think his priorities are simply misplaced. Al-Qaeda is more of a danger; North Korea is more of a danger; we need more focus on al-Qaeda and North Korea, and less focus on Iraq.

AM: Do you honestly think that Saddam Hussein would not work with al-Qaeda or terrorists out of some sort of scruples?

HD: There is very little evidence that he has. I don’t think Saddam Hussein has any scruples whatsoever. He’s obviously completely immoral and a dreadful person. But it is not in his own best interest to work with al-Qaeda, and that’s why I don’t think he has, and I think there is very little evidence. I saw the presentation that the Secretary made to the United Nations. I thought there was very good evidence that they were hiding nerve gas or some chemical weapons. I thought there was very little evidence that they were in fact giving weapons to the terrorists.

GB: If the President decides to go to war with Iraq, what will your posture be?

HD: My posture is always that I support American troops, because I’ve visited the troops. I was in Paris Island a few weeks ago for that express purpose. You always support American troops abroad, even if you disagree with the policy.

GB: But you’ll still continue to speak out against—

HD: Well, yeah, I suspect that I will.

GB: Okay, well we’re going to have to leave it there for one second but we’re going to come back to you in just a moment, and we’re going to ask you about the President’s Medicare plan.



AM: Welcome back to Capital Report, we’re here with Democratic Presidential Candidate Howard Dean. Governor Dean, thanks for staying with us. You have described yourself as being “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.” What do you mean by that?

HD: I mean that Democrats, in order to win, have to stand up for Democratic party principles. I’ll give you a quick example: the President proposes a 640 billion dollar tax cut. The Democrats propose a 136 billion dollar tax cut. We have the largest deficit in the history of the country. The debate now is about how big should the tax cut be; I think the debate should be about whether we should have a tax cut at all if we have the largest deficit in the history of the country and a war coming up with no way to pay for it.

AM: Zero tax cut. Then what do you do on the health care front? There’s almost a trillion-dollar health care plan out there, is that what you would subscribe to?

HD: Yeah, but you’ve got to roll back the President’s tax cut—that’s already done the damage—for those who make more than 300,000 dollars a year and use that money for the health care plan.

PM: How are you going to win a presidential race by telling people that you’re going to repeal their tax cut?

HD: Because they didn’t get a tax cut. If you ask people, would you rather have the President’s tax cut or prescription benefits for Medicare? Would you rather have the President’s tax cut or fully fund special education? Would you rather have the President’s tax cut or would you like the road money that the President took to help balance the budget—which he didn’t do—they are going to pick roads, education and health care every single time. Most average people in this country did not get any tax cut.

AM: How about gay marriage? That’s something you supported in Vermont—

HD: I’ve never supported gay marriage.

AM: Well, civil unions.

HD: Well, it’s not the same thing. There’s a big difference.

AM: Okay. Explain—what’s the Democrat position—

HD: Well, I can’t speak for the Democratic position because I don’t speak for the Democratic party.

AM: Well, no, you’re the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.

HD: Oh, I see. Every American ought to have equal rights under the law. Ours does. Our bill says marriage is between a man and a woman—but same-sex couples may enter into civil unions, which allows them the same rights that I have: hospital visitation, health insurance, inheritance rights; the same rights that I have. Vermont is the only state in the country where everyone is equal under the law and I’m proud of that.

AM: And you would say that in every state—

HD: No, I don’t believe that’s the federal government’s business. What I favor is federal recognition of civil unions, but I don’t favor forcing Minnesota and Alabama to have civil unions if they don’t want to. Same reason I think the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional—that is not a prerogative of the federal government. It’s a prerogative of the states.

GB: Governor, you’re also a doctor. Talk to us about what you think about the President’s Medicare proposal that he outlined today—what he says would allow the elderly to get their prescription drug benefits.

HD: It will do no such thing. This is a political document. If it passes, I can guarantee you it won’t insure a single senior because they actually passed something like this in Nevada and not one senior got health care. You can’t do prescription benefits the way the President wants to, and he knows perfectly well it won’t work, and he has no intention of ever funding it.

AM: Let’s take a look at some of the details of that plan. I’d like to understand exactly why you think it’s a disaster. He’s talking about spending 400 billion dollars over the next ten years, which is not a small amount of money; provide all seniors with a drug discount card; and subsidize low-income seniors.

HD: Only if they get out of the guaranteed Medicare and go into an HMO. The subsidy is insufficient if you’re in an insurance program and out of Medicare, and they tried that in Nevada. No self-respecting insurance company is signing up for this. In fact, HMOs are dumping their Medicare patients as fast as they can because an insurance company can’t keep up with a product that’s going up at five times the rate of inflation. They tried this in Nevada. It failed. This is a political document, not a serious public policy document.

GB: Governor, I want to get to something that John McCain was saying. He clearly felt very strongly about it when he said the Democratic candidates ought to essentially renounce Al Sharpton, not stand on platforms with him, because he represented the extreme of the party in the same way that Jerry Falwell represents the extreme of the Republican party. What’s your response to that?

HD: My response is, anybody in America has the right to run for President. I don’t think it’s up to me; it’s up to the voters to decide who’s unqualified and who’s not. I think it would be a mistake for me to denounce anybody and claim they were unqualified.

GB: Could you see running on a ticket with Al Sharpton?

HD: I think that’s extremely unlikely, because I think Al Sharpton is going to have a tough time getting a significant number of votes. But I think Al Sharpton has a right to run. I don’t think it’s up to us to decide he shouldn’t run.

GB: Okay. Governor, we’re going to have to leave it there. Thank you very much for being with us.

HD: Thank you very much.

GB: Thank you.

Continue reading/discuss Capital Report, CNBC ...

David of the New York group sends in this report of the New York Meetup, featuring Dean himself:

The New York City meetup was a smashing, beyond-all-expectations success! We had over FIVE HUNDRED people in attendance, surprising ourselves, the venue, Meetup, the police (!) and Gov. Dean himself. But let me start at the beginning. As it was everywhere else, the meetup was officially slated to start at 7pm. Essex, the restaurant/bar which hosted us, began filling up well before then. New York for Dean volunteers canvassed the room, handing out flyers & donation forms and collecting names & e-mail addresses. One exceptionally generous fellow was disappointed to learn that he could only give $2000!

Not long after 7, Essex started getting quite packed and a line formed outside. Inside, several hundred people were busy schmoozing & getting to know each other. New York for Dean took this opportunity to announce an exciting development. Liz, one of our co-chairs, got on the PA system and explained that our group is now co-ordinating with the official Dean for America campaign in Burlington. What this means in practical terms is that anyone interested in volunteering here in New York City should get in touch with us - we'll be planning lots of activities and events in the coming weeks and months. (E-mail your contact info to volunteer@newyorkfordean.com.)

Around 8 o'clock, we got word that the Governor was arriving. Despite our best efforts to get people inside, there was still a big line outside. (Which prompted the NYPD to wonder, what on earth is such a big crowd doing on the lower east side on a weeknight? - and to do a little impromptu, but of course unnecessary, crowd control.) Fortunately, those waiting outside got a chance to meet-and-greet as the Governor "worked the line", going up and down shaking hands and introducing himself. Dean finally walked into Essex to raucous cheers and chants of "Howard! Howard!" It was too packed for him to mingle, so he proceeded to the upstairs balcony area. Jason introduced the Governor, who stood at the front of a balcony before a rapt crowd of over 300 people.

And he delivered! Dean gave a rousing speech which prompted cheers and applause at almost every line. He started off by saying that we need regime change - in the White House in 2004. The crowd went wild when he announced that he was, as always, "from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party". He hit many of his familiar points: The need for universal healthcare, the urgency of dealing with North Korea and Al Qaeda as opposed to the foolishness of invading Iraq, and the importance of caring for our nations' children. He also discussed how our generation has tremendous tools at our disposal to effect social change - tools that his generation lacked. He specifically discussed the importance of the Internet, both how it brought people to the event and how we can use it to continue to help the campaign. Dean left right after he spoke - again, to enormous applause and cheering.

Words really aren't enough to express how amazing last night's event was. The number of people, and the crowd's reaction to Dean, was unbelievably encouraging. And the fact that this event was completely a grassroots effort makes it all the more remarkable - the campaign didn't lift a finger, and yet over five hundred people came out to support the Governor. And some of those people, I should note, came from at least as far away as Connecticut and Massachusetts. There was also a ton of press, including the New York Times, New York Post and Fox News, so hopefully, we'll be seeing some stories soon.

Again, if you'd like to join us here in New York, please send your contact info to volunteer@newyorkfordean.com and be sure to check out our website, http://www.newyorkfordean.com. And let's go Howard!

(Photos are available on the meetup site and David promises there will be more forthcoming. We will put some up on the DeanBlog but check the NY Yahoo group for the latest.)

Continue reading/discuss New York Meetup report ...

From The New Republic comes an article which does a good job of providing some background on the anti-war and pro-labor movements in Iowa. It does a goob job of looking at the election precedents that have been set in Iowa in the context of the war and labor movements. It compares and contrasts the current candidates with previous winners and losers in Iowa and gives examples of how Iowa can be a make-or-break state for the candidates.
Unfortunately the article misses the mark toward the end when it states that, should the Iraq war be successful, Dean and Kucinich will have a hard time explaining "why they opposed ridding the Middle East of a tyrant". What they neglect to mention is that Dean has repeatedly stated that Saddam is "as evil as they say he is" and he'd support war IF the United Nations deemed it neccessary. However, he also feels this is the wrong war at the wrong time, and that our foreign relations priorities should be focused on more pressing crises such as North Korea. It is a sensible and reasonable position.
By dismissing Dean as only an anti-war candidate, they also fail to acknowledge that Dean's campaign began with issues such as health care and the economy. I think TNR is missing the point: Dean is not the single-issue guy they like to portray him as. He has a well rounded platform that addresses the concerns of most Americans.

Continue reading/discuss Why Dean's anti-war stance works in Iowa ...

An interesting op-ed from TAP states that Dean's appeal is mainly emotional:

"But to see Dean's appeal to hard-shell Democrats as chiefly ideological is to miss entirely what's important about his presence in this race. His appeal is mainly emotional. He is telling beleaguered party loyalists -- sick to death of counting up their party leaders' wretched misjudgments and capitulations over the last two years -- that here is one Democrat who wasn't a part of that train wreck and who just isn't afraid of Republicans. This is why Dean matters. When he says, "I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," there is, to be sure, an ideological element to it; but it's a phrase laced with far more electricity than ideology."

While I'll admit that Dean's passion is what drew me to support him in the first place, I don't think that is all there is to it. Once you get past the fiery rhetoric and actually start investigating his record and his positions, you realise there is a lot more to this candidate than meets the eye. Dr. Dean has a proven record in Vermont, both fiscally and socially. He carries none of the Washington baggage that is dragging down most of the other Democratic contenders. And when he speaks, you get the sense that he is an honest, forthright man. All those things are what draws me to support him. What is it about Dean that gets you fired up?

Continue reading/discuss What the press doesn't get about Howard Dean, via the American Prospect ...

A favorable article has been published in Vermont's Seven Days newspaper. The reporter was sent to a recent New Hampshire fundraiser to gauge Dean's support. He found what we all know already: Dean is a passionate candidate who gets people excited. Here is a quick snippet from the article:
"Heading home on I-89, Jordan scans the AM dial in search of a right-wing talk radio station — mostly to help us stay awake. Mean-while, I start thumbing through my notebook to see what observations I jotted down during Dean’s speech. A wave of anxiety washes over me as I realize I don’t have any. While Dean was talking, I got swept up by the energy in the room. I’ve attended plenty of good political speeches, even a few excellent ones, including several by Mario Cuomo. But Dean spoke with the kind of honesty you don’t expect from a politician so much as from… well, a family physician. Are Vermonters really surprised to hear him called a “fiery speaker?” A few minutes into his speech, I was amazed that anyone would describe him otherwise. And I’ll admit it: A couple times I felt a chill run down my spine, as though I were watching something historical, like an old newsreel of a Harry Truman stump speech."

I believe the significance of this article is that the Vermont press (even if it's the alterna-press) is beginning to print more positive things about Dr. Dean. Could this signal a trend? Is the press finally beginning to take him seriously, like we do?

Continue reading/discuss Gaining momentum in New Hampshire, courtesy of the Vermont press ...

Dean has clearly recognized the danger in being labeloed the "anti-war candidate" or the "hyper liberal candidate". He is clearly being aggressive in trying to counter that emerging conventional wisdom:

"I think I'll have traction no matter what happens," the former Vermont governor said in an interview Tuesday. "I represent a whole generation of Democrats that has felt beaten down."

The 54-year-old physician said of his rivals for the nomination: "Everybody else is afraid of taking Democratic positions." But he said, "There is no reason to be timid about what we believe in; a timid messenger is a losing messenger."

Dean noted at a Washington fund-raiser Tuesday that some in the media have taken to calling him the liberal Democrat in the race.

"Well, if being a liberal is balancing the budget, that's fine with me," Dean told a crowd. "And I'll bet it's fine with most Americans. If being a liberal is joining Canada and Britain and France and Germany and Japan and Italy and Israel in having universal health insurance for all of its citizens, then you may call me what you want."

And Dean said if it is liberal to fight the Bush administration's education policy for establishing federal standards for local school boards, "then you may call me what you want. I'm proud of it."

During the Democratic National Committee meeting last month, Dean drew loud applause when he said he was from "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." Since then, some have wondered why Dean failed to credit the politician best known for using that line the late Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, a lawmaker proud of his liberal credentials.

Dean said Tuesday that he used to credit California State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, a Democrat who represents Santa Monica, with the line.

"I got a lot of e-mails from Wellstone's people," Dean said. "I'm not going to give it up. I admired Wellstone, though he's a bit more liberal than I am."

A fiercely anti-war candidate, Dean said he doesn't worry that a U.S.-led offensive against Iraq would end his appeal.

"I'll be back where I started," he said, "talking about health insurance and balancing the budget."

Continue reading/discuss Dean Says He'll Stick to Anti-War Stance ...

Open thread, everyone! Did anyone attend Dean 2004 meetups tonight? If so, what did you discuss? Perhaps if we post our experiences, we can come up with effective ways to help make Dr. Dean the democratic nominee in 2004. As an aside, here's a rundown of the latest meetup.com numbers:
Registered Dean supporters: 4297
Registered Kerry supporters: 381
Registered Edwards supporters: 549
Top five Dean locations:
5. Seattle WA 130
4. LA - Santa Monica CA 145
3. Boston 156
2. Washington DC 356
1. New York City 499

UPDATE: David of the NYC group has promised a full report, so stay tuned! In the meantime, the Burlington meetup was reported on it the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus. It profiles the Meetup phenom in general. Interestingly, it mentions that there is a cost to the Dean campaign for using Meetups services:

To date, Dean has 1,400 people who have signed up, Weissleder said. And as a result of the service, the campaign has access to the database of names and contact information of the people who signed up for the service. The company also sends out mass get-out-the-vote e-mails to those who have signed up.

Dean is the first presidential candidate to use the Internet service as a tool for organizing political support at a grassroots level. Weissleder declined to disclose the cost of the service.

Dean may not be the last. Weissleder said other candidates have already contacted the company to discuss arrangements.

“No other candidate has fully endorsed or embraced Meetup. We’re in discussion with other campaigns, but the governor has been the most pro-active,” Weissleder said.

Continue reading/discuss Meetups report: open thread ...

The good people behind AlGore04.com have a section of their message board which is dedicated to discussing the current contenders. In the Dean section (linked above) there are mostly positive reviews, and some posters have expressed their gratitude over HD acknowledging that Gore was robbed in 2000. Granted, there are some concerns (not everyone gels with his handgun stance, for example), but again, mostly positive comments are coming from that camp.

To the good folks at AlGore04: I honestly don't think that Al is going to run, but I admire you all for your tenacity. I completely agree and acknowledge the fact that Bush is a squatter in the White House, and Gore was the winner in 2000. I am sure you'd find similar sentiment among Dean's supporters. As a Dean supporter, I'd really like the pro-Gore folks to come on board or at least consider supporting Dr. Dean (because again, I don't believe Al is going to jump in at this point). I think that Howard will champion and respect the issues that you hold dear (such as the environment, technology, and the economy), and I do believe that he is the only one who will not give Bush any wiggle room during the debates.

Continue reading/discuss AlGore04.com's Howard Dean discussion board ...

Our current "regime" is determined to attack Iraq regardless of reality, while they are ignoring more pressing issues such as the crisis on the Korean peninsula. Yesterday Dean launched another blistering critique of the Bush "foreign policy": "It's appalling. They are putting us in harm's way because of their obsession with Iraq, which does not now and is not going to have nuclear weapons."

Our candidate went on to detail what he sees as serious failures on the Korean peninsula. He stated that Bush's refusal to engage North Korea directly has caused the crisis to worsen, especially considering that North Korea is about to "go nuclear" on Bush's watch. "We could find ourselves in a war with North Korea very quickly and this administration is virtually paying no attention to it."

The good doctor also pointed out that recent diplomatic failures are contributing to rising anti-American sentiment across the globe, and added "It's ghastly. We have treated most of the world with contempt, both our enemies and our friends, and it's not surprising we don't have many friends left."

The article ends on a positive note, with Dean stating that fundraising is going very well during this first quarter. However, the campaign still needs your help! This first quarter is crucial because it will probably determine who the true "Tier 1" candidates are. Please consider making a donation to the Dean campaign now if you support him. It's important to give him financial backing and show the DNC establishment that we believe Dean is the man to take on Bush and WIN!

Continue reading/discuss Dean: President Bush "putting us in harms way" via reckless foreign policy ...

Andrew Sullivan is the latest to try and portray Dean as deliberately lying about the war on Iraq:

I'll never be able to loathe Howard Dean. For what he did in supporting civil unions in Vermont, any gay person would have to thank him for political sense and courage. But that's all the more reason for calling him on a simple, obvious and brazen fib.

According to the New York Times, Dean made the following remarks to the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee: 'What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq? . .

Huh? . . . Whatever else this war is, it's not unilateral. A clear majority of European nations – eighteen at the last count – support the war. From Australia to Poland, we have dozens of allies, large and small. Britain, one of the few remaining non-American military powers, is contributing most of its armed forces. We may not have unanimous global support for an attack but to describe the coming war as 'unilateral' is simply false.

There is no such fib - the definition of unilateral is not "no one agrees with us". It means, in this context, "acting without formal approval of the UN". No one denies that the US can invade Iraq (ie, is capable of), nor that the US does have supporters. But tomorrow if Iraq signed up N. Korea and Iran for its plan to reinvade Kuwait, that would not make it a multilateral act.

Continue reading/discuss Dean Defense Forces: Dean lied about "unilateral" ...

We knew it would happen eventually - Dean would be critiqued for not being hammered enough. In the Media Note this week, Howard Kurtz mentions a criticism of Dean by Craig Crawford, columnist for the Congressional Quarterly :

"Dean likes to call himself the champion of the 'Democratic wing of the Democratic party,' a line rival campaigns insist he stole from the late Sen. Paul Wellstone.

"But Dean fails to mention he flunks a leading question on any liberal's litmus test: gun control. He gets an 'A' rating from the National Rifle Association. He argues that this makes him stronger against Republicans in a general election, especially in the South.

"Even Dean's primary claim for liberal support comes with a caveat. He boasts to Democratic interest groups of his victory as governor of Vermont to allow civil unions for gay couples. But gay rights lobbyists note that Dean refuses to endorse similar changes at the federal level, rendering his support irrelevant to them.

"Dean also irks advocates of drug law reform for successfully opposing a Vermont bill to permit seriously ill and dying patients access to medicinal marijuana."

We are going to see more of this - it's as blatantly misrepresenting of Dean's views as the RNC attack points released earlier, and it's Dean's weakness regarding domestic policy. It's actually somewhat amusing (in a grim sort of way) to read these charges side by side with the RNC's points. Yes, they are actually talking about the same candidate!

Continue reading/discuss Dean isn't liberal enough? ...

Dr. Dean's "anti-war" stance is already garnering criticism from his opponents, some who accuse him of splitting hairs and wondering exactly what is Dean's stance on Iraq. Let's revisit this for a moment, since some people out there still don't get it.

First of all, Dean does not support attacking Iraq unilaterally unless Iraq is proven to be an immediate threat to our national security. Some things which would prove an immediate threat include Iraq supplying WMD to terrorists (not proven) or for Iraq to have an active nuclear arsenal (not proven). Dr. Dean sensibly recognises that the use of force would be an option if our national security were threatened. Bottom line is that Dr. Dean (and many of us) don't believe Iraq is an immediate threat to our security, and therefore we should give the inspectors more time to do their jobs. That seems to be a very sensible and logical position, and one that rankles many a war-hawk.

He differs from the other candidates in that he would not have voted to give GWB a "blank check" to attack Iraq. That is essentially what Congress did when they voted for the Iraq resolution. I personally don't believe the candidates who voted for that resolution have ANY room to wiggle on this one. Basically, if they were uncomfortable with the resolution, or they did not believe that we should attack Iraq, then they should have stood up for their principals and not voted to hand over that authority to the President (and really, that's what they did: they abdicated their authority on the matter). As it stands, all of them are scrambling to defend their indefensible vote (okay, except Liebermann) while Dean, Kucinich, Braun, and Sharpton rightfully take them to task.

Essentially what his detractors are saying is that Dean isn't really the anti-war candidate, or he is and he wouldn't defend us with force. But anyone who's taken the time to follow his campaign has known the truth from the get-go. Howard has always stated that he'd use force to defend the United States. But right now there is no need to defend ourselves from Iraq because there is no threat. Dr. Dean recognises that the real threats to our security originate with Al-Quaeda and North Korea. Go read his stances on national and homeland security.

Think about it. It's all about priorities, and as Dr. Dean says, right now we are focused on wrong crisis.

*thanks to Chris Curtis for the last two links

Continue reading/discuss Dean clarifies war stance... again ...

Dr. Dean made an appearance at Dartmouth recently, and by all accounts he put on a fine show. Dean for America organised the $50 per person event and admitted some members of Dartmouth's Young Democrats for free. Dean gave his usual stump speech and hammered home a few points that the media seems to be missing. Afterwards, Dean told The Dartmouth that several students were planning to form a group that could be one part of a national network of student backing.

I highly encourage any and all students to form on-campus groups to support Dean! Use the resources that are out there, such as meetup.com, to organise local student groups. Gen-Y, you all are so tech-savvy; I know you can do it! Campus activity can really help a candidate, especially during these early stages. A good chunk of Bill Clinton's primary success in 1992 was owed to all the Gen-Xers who supported him. Your participation in this next election is VITAL! You are a huge voting bloc with the ability to influence all the candidates. The power is in your hands.

If any of you would like advice on how to organise a student group, feel free to contact Dean for America. They can supply you with materials which will detail how the primaries work and help you get organised. I'll also offer any advice I can, as will we all, so feel free to leave a comment if you need some advice on starting a student group for Dean 2004!

Continue reading/discuss Dean courts college crowd ...

Business Week does a roundup of the contenders, and places Kerry, Gephart, and Dean at the top of their list. Their description of Dean is amusing, calling him the "rock star of 2003" and pointing out that he's managed to garner early support from party activists. The article suggest that we shuldn't count Gephart out yet, but does emphasise that Lieberman is sinking like a rock among party faithful.

Continue reading/discuss Business Week's rundown on the Democratic contenders ...

On a multi-person blog called Free Dartmouth, there are a number of people debating Dean's merits. I found it via the referrer logs - it's a refreshing mix of enthusiasm and skepticism.

Continue reading/discuss Debating Dean at Dartmouth ...

I can't speak for everyone, but Dean's main appeal to me is his stance on domestic policy. However, as Iraq war fever builds to a pitch, it's unsurprising that Dean's message on the campaign trail is being driven/pulled by foreign policy issues, and foreign policy has dominated all his recent media appearances (which has put him in danger of being marginalized in conventional wisdom as the anti-war candidate).

Given that Dean has no foreign policy experience, only opinions, this has made him vulnerable in certain ways. For example, regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, Dean is already considered a potential "hawk in dove's clothing" :

In his major foreign policy address to date, a February 17 speech at Drake University in Iowa, Dean blasted the Bush administration’s foreign policy regarding Iraq and several other areas, but – when it came to Israel and Palestine – the former Vermont governor declared that, while the United States should become more engaged, he did not have any fundamental objections with President George W. Bush’s policies. Dean called for an end to Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians, but he did not call for a cessation of Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians. Similarly, there was no call for an end of the Israeli occupation, for Israeli compliance with UN Security Council resolutions, or a withdrawal from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied territories or even a freeze on the construction of new settlements.
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Dean also appears to reject the widespread consensus among Israeli peace activists and Middle East scholars that Palestinian terrorism is a direct outgrowth of the 35-year Israeli military occupation. Instead, Dean seems to argue that terrorism itself is the core issue. He also rejects calls by APN and other liberal Zionist groups that Israel’s requested $12 billion loan guarantee be linked to an Israeli freeze on constructing additional illegal settlements on confiscated Palestinian land, arguing that such aid should instead be unconditional. Pushing for such a dramatic and unconditional increase in financial support for the incumbent government just before Israelis went to the polls in January was widely seen as a not-too-subtle endorsement of Sharon’s re-election.
...
There are indications, however, that Dean’s position on Israel and Palestine is not firm. Aides of the candidate claim that the former governor – who has focused on domestic issues up to this point in his political career – is still in the process of developing his position on this and other foreign policy concerns and could still be swayed to take a more moderate stance. Whether or not he will hold on to his initial hard line position will depend in large part on whether peace and human rights activists will embrace him despite his apparent hawkish views or reject him as being too similar to Bush and the Republicans.

Whatever your opinion on Israel-Palestine, you can appreciate the gulfs that Dean will hae to bridge to be acceptable as a progressive candidate that liberals and progressives can unify behind. But Dean's critiques come from the right as well as the left (within the context of liberal-progressives). An essay in the New York Observer mentions that Kerry is already spinning Dean as beholden to the UN:

On Iraq, Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan told the Associated Press that Mr. Dean wanted to give the U.N. "veto power over national-security decisions," and that it was "an extraordinary proposition, one never endorsed by any U.S. President or serious candidate for the Presidency."

Joe Rospars, who brought the NY observer piece to my attention, has a defense of Dean against the UN-lackey charge.

Overall, Dean will continue to be exposed from both the left and the right. A moderate is easy pickings on foreign policy, the inverse of domestic issues where moderates are king. Dean needs to resist attempts by the media to probe foreign policy issues, by responding clearly with his positions, and steering the debate back towards domestic affairs.

Continue reading/discuss what domestic issues? ...

This is the full transcriptr from Dean's March 2nd appearance on Face the Nation (courtesy Teddy Davis):

SHOW: Face the Nation (10:30 AM ET) - CBS

HEADLINE: Howard Dean and Dana Priest discuss Iraq and Campaign 2004

BOB SCHIEFFER, host: Today we get serious about the coming presidential campaign. We intend to have everybody seeking the Democratic nomination on for a serious discussion of the issues. We begin with Howard Dean. Joining in the questioning is Dana Priest of The Washington Post.

And, Governor Dean, I want to get right to it. Liberal Democrats have, by and large, been very suspicious of our intelligence agencies, of the CIA. They've been reluctant to--to fund those programs. But today, we seem to have a major intelligence coup, and that is the--the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to be perhaps the single-most important member of--of Osama bin Laden's group. Osama bin Laden, of course, is the leader, but this man seems to be the brains behind all of these attacks, including 9/11. What do you think about that?

Governor HOWARD DEAN (Democrat, Vermont): I think it's terrific. And actually, I think you're partly right about what you say about the CIA. I think one of the reasons for the intelligence failure before September 11th is that the FBI has, I think, had a leadership problem for some time. The CIA's problem is they were underfunded by Congress for a long time, and that's one of the reasons that I think they were unable to do the things that they--they needed to be--that they needed to be able to do to--to head off September 11th and catastrophes. So I think this is a real coup. I think our intelligence agency ought to be very, very proud of themselves and this is a very big deal.

SCHIEFFER: So--so I would take it that if you were president, you would increase funding for the CIA?

Gov. DEAN: I would.

SCHIEFFER: You think we need to do more, rather than less...

Gov. DEAN: Yeah. I think we really do.

SCHIEFFER: ...with intelligence agencies?

Gov. DEAN: I--I think one of the criticisms that I had of the president regarding the Iraq war is that we're not paying enough attention to al-Qaida and North Korea, which are both--are imminent threats to the United States, and we're paying too much attention to Iraq, which is not an imminent threat to the United States. And I think that--that we need to increase our funding for things like the CIA, for things like homeland security, police, first response people and probably spend a little less attention on tax cuts and on this war in Iraq.

Ms. DANA PRIEST (The Washington Post): In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the number one operational control of--of al-Qaida, do you think that it's acceptable to use what we might call unorthodox methods to question him, given the fact that he knows about current operations?

Gov. DEAN: If--if you mean driving hot slivers under his fingernails, yes, that's un--unacceptable. I do think we need to get the most information out of him as we possibly can. And there are lots of techniques we could do that without crossing over the line to torture.

Ms. PRIEST: OK.

SCHIEFFER: What do you think about the--should the CIA have the right--because as I understand it, Dana, correct me if I'm wrong--the CAI--the CIA has now been given authority to assassinate certain people. What do you think about that?

Gov. DEAN: I think as long as they're not heads of state, that's within--we--we're in a war here. We're in a war against people who murdered 3,000 Americans in the World Trade Center. We have to fight that war everywhere we can. And I think the CIA absolutely ought to have the right to assassinate leaders of terrorist organizations and people who are, in fact, terrorists trying to attack the United States. This is combat. The rules of combat apply, not the rules of peacetime. I think assassinating state leaders is a different matter, and I do not want to go back to the days where we were complicit in some way in the assassination of a democratically elected leader, for example, in Chile. I think that would be a very bad step.

Ms. PRIEST: You mentioned the FBI. There's been still a lot of criticism that they haven't made a successful transformation into an investigatory agency here at home. Do you think that we need to at least consider the creation of a new homeland domestic security apparatus like the MI5 in Great Britain?

Gov. DEAN: No. I think we ought to get the FBI run properly. It hasn't been run properly for some time. And I think Director Freeh was really a disappointment. I'm not a big fan of Director Mueller. I simply think that the culture in the FBI is the problem. Now in our state, we have a very good relationship between the local and the state and the federal folks. But that's not true in a lot of other states. I--I know something about what went on in the Washington sniper case. I thought the FBI was very difficult in terms of their dealings with local law enforcement people. That's not a good thing. That's a cultural problem. We need leadership in the FBI who will change that culture, and I haven't seen that in a long, long time.

SCHIEFFER: Let me go back to your position on the war. You have been against war with Iraq from the very beginning, and in some ways really set yourself apart from some of the other Democratic candidates by saying you--you simply oppose it.

Gov. DEAN: Well, that's not exactly so. I do oppose it because I don't believe there is any cause for unilateral and pre-emptive interact--intervention in Iraq. Iraq is not an immediate threat to the United States. Al-Qaida and North Korea--North Korea is about to become about to be--I can't believe under a conservative Republican president that he is going to be the one that, quote, unquote, from the old days, "loses North Korea," and allows it to become a nuclear power.

Because, see, we simply refuse to talk to them, which is incredibly foolish. That is a really dangerous situation. The reason I don't believe we ought to go into Iraq unilaterally is they're not an imminent threat, and we set the tone for global military intervention in this world. If we go in, soon--sooner or later, somebody else, perhaps, the Chinese, will say that 'Taiwan is a threat so let's go in,' and 'The United States has done it, so why don't we have the right to do it?' That's the real case to be made against unilateral and pre-emptive action.

SCHIEFFER: Well, number one--and I want to get back to the original question I posed. Number one, it's not unilateral. There will be other nations that will go along with us.

Gov. DEAN: Well, except that we're about to pay $26 billion to the Turks if they'll vote our way. And that--when--when you start paying money to people to come--agree with your foreign policy--I mean, here we're going to pay $26 billion to the Turks and we don't have $5 billion to spend on homeland security, helping states and local governments fight terrorism, there's something the matter with this president's priorities, I think.

Ms. PRIEST: But it--but is the use of the term uni--unilateral a little overblown? We didn't pay the Spanish anything. We aren't paying the Bulgarians anything. There are--are a dozen the count--of countries who agree with the US position on this.

Gov. DEAN: But, the--but, Dana, here's my--the way I look at this. This is the United Nations' job. Saddam is not an imminent threat to us, but he is an imminent threat to nations in that region. He is a bully. He is a tyrant. So the United Nations' job as--as a peacekeeping institution is to make sure that he is disarmed, and he should be disarmed. The United Nations is making progress. The inspectors are making progress. Hopefully, as we sit here talking, they're starting to destroy the missiles that were deemed to be out of compliance. So why not let this pro--this process continue to work instead of waging a war pre-emptively outside the purview of the United Nations?

SCHIEFFER: Well, d--are you saying, Governor, that under no circumstances should we ever take unilateral action? I mean...

Gov. DEAN: No.

SCHIEFFER: ...do we leave the defense of this country to the United Nations?

Gov. DEAN: No, absolutely not. I've never said that, and I don't say that now.

SCHIEFFER: So--so under what circumstances?

Gov. DEAN: If a country is an imminent threat to the United States, I believe we have a right to defend ourselves. Had it--had we known five days ahead of time before al-Qaida blew the World Trade Centers up with planes, we--of course, would have defended ourselves, and s--done everything we could to stop it. If Saddam possesses nuclear weapons, if he has a credible nuclear program, if he's giving weapons of mass destruction to the terrorists, then we have a right, I think, to intervene unilaterally. But n--there's been no good case made for those things. As it is, he is a threat--a regional threat which the United Nations ought to deal with but he is not a threat to the United States. And there are two threats to the United States, al-Qaida and North Korea, which we are not effectively dealing with.

SCHIEFFER: Well--well, let me go back now to the original question that I was leading to. You--you have been against going to war with Iraq, basically. But if war does come, then will you support that action, or will you continue to oppose it?

Gov. DEAN: I think it--a lot of it depends on the circumstances. Certainly you always support the troops in the field. I went down to Paris Island about three weeks ago just so could I look at their operations and look at the kids and have lunch with the kids that--who are Marines. I mean, they don't consider themselves kids but they're 18 and 24 years old, 17 to 24 years old. Those are the kids we are going to be sending over there, ultimately. And, you know, of course, there are some circumstances which we--under which we should do that. But I think we have to do this much more carefully, and be much more thoughtful about what the real dangers are. And Iraq is third on my list, not first or second.

SCHIEFFER: All right. The--the Iraqis have begun to destroy these missiles that earlier this week Saddam Hussein said, 'Number one, we don't have any missiles like that.'

Gov. DEAN: Right.

SCHIEFFER: Then he said, 'No, under no circumstances,' he told Dan Rather, 'would we destroy them.' Now they have begun to destroy them. Is that progress or is it, as the president said, just the tip of the iceberg of a problem here?

Gov. DEAN: Bob, I think it's big progress. Look, Saddam is not a nice man. He is a liar, he's all the things that the president says he is. But if we can win this war of disarmament without actually sending our kids over there to die, then I think we're far ahead of the game. It does take some patience. And I wish we had a little more patience in Iraq and a little less patience in--a little willingness to negotiate in North Korea. We are--we are in the middle of a full-blown crisis in North Korea and the president refuses to even admit so.

SCHIEFFER: Well, are you suggesting we take military action against North Korea?

Gov. DEAN: No, I'm su--I'm suggesting we start to talk to them. I mean, you...

Ms. PRIEST: Well, what happens if that doesn't work and they go ahead with their nuclear processing?

Gov. DEAN: Then we...

Ms. PRIEST: Can you imagine an unilateral pre-emptive strike on North Korea's missile system?

Gov. DEAN: That could--we--we could be forced into that. If they develop a missile that can reach the coast of--the West Coast of the United States, which they are in the process of doing--such a missile has been tested on the ground but never fired--we would have a very serious--much more serious problem than we have with Iraq because then they would become an imminent threat to the United States of America and to our people.

Ms. PRIEST: Would you say the same for Iran, whose nuclear capability is very sophisticated...

Gov. DEAN: We...

Ms. PRIEST: ...much more so than Iraq?

Gov. DEAN: Yes. We have to be much--very, very careful of Iran. One of my criticisms of this president is because we have no oil policy of any kind here, other than drill in the national parks, we--he is beholden to the Saudis and the Iranians. The Saudis and the Iranians and the Syrians are funding most of the terror in the Middle East, and this president has not been willing to confront that, probably because we have no oil policy. Absolutely, Iran is a--a very serious danger.

Ms. PRIEST: So again, you could consider pre-emptive strikes against the Iranian nuclear program?

Gov. DEAN: Look, you never rule in or out anything, but when America is threatened imminently with a--by a foreign power, then we have a right to defend ourselves. I do not believe that is the case in Iraq. And I do believe that al-Qaida and North Korea are imminent threats...

Ms. PRIEST: You--you've said that...

Gov. DEAN: ...and we're going to have to deal with that.

Ms. PRIEST: ...Iraq does not pose an imminent threat, but isn't by the nature of the threat--small vials that can kill thousands of people--isn't it going to be particularly difficult to d--to figure out when the threat is imminent? In fact, it might be too late by that time?

Gov. DEAN: You know, that's always the judgment call you have to make, and it's a very tough judgment call, but Saddam has had these weapons for 10 or 12 years. We have--it--I--I said before, one of the criteria for Saddam being judged as an imminent threat is if we find that he's giving weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. We have not--I have not seen the secretary or the president make a convincing case for that. If there were a convincing case for that, yes, then Saddam would be an imminent threat.

SCHIEFFER: Final question. And here's the part that concerns me about what I hear you saying today. You're talking about this not a threat. It's a--but how can you trust Saddam Hussein? He--he's now saying he doesn't have any of these weapons.

Gov. DEAN: No one...

SCHIEFFER: I mean, his--his word is not worth a nickel...

Gov. DEAN: Bob, we--absolutely.

SCHIEFFER: ...as we found out this week.

Gov. DEAN: That's absolutely right. No one is going to trust Saddam Hussein. Anybody would be an idiot to trust Saddam Hussein. We need to continue to put pressure on him, have inspectors. I actually thought--that the Germans made a suggestion to increase the number of inspectors--inspectors by 300 percent. I think those are very good in--a very good suggestion. We are making progress with Saddam. He is a liar. He's a terrible person. But if we don't have to pre-eminently--pre-emptively attack him, we're much better off.

SCHIEFFER: All right. We have to end it there. We'll invite you to come back another time...

Gov. DEAN: Thanks very much.

SCHIEFFER: ...to talk about domestic issues, but I thought it was important to get your thoughts on...

Gov. DEAN: Thank you. I appreciate it.

SCHIEFFER: ...on the news of the day. Thank you very.

Gov. DEAN: Thank you, Bob.

Continue reading/discuss transcript: Face the Nation 3/02/03 ...

This is a political report that comes out weekly from VT, and included in this weeks report is this clip about Dean:

THE MESSAGE IS THE MESSAGE

Dean is a big fan of message, message drives campaigns. We agree. Dean shamelessly will repeat the very same words before each and every group his campaign can put in front of him all day every day. It is not easy; Dean does it faultlessly. It shows in his results. Especially last week.

WALDO TRIFECTAS

Yup, our own Howard Dean had the weekend at the tracks; the big winner of three in a row. First, Meathead endorsed him for president. This is a really big deal. Meathead is now Rob Reiner, mega Hollywood producer/director. Reiner choose Dean because he is "the only major Democrat candidate speaking out against going to war without the support of the United Nations."

Hey, Dean a "major" candidate. The Little Scrapper has done good! Well, depends on your perspective. Reiner’s endorsement will mean an easy $2,000,000 in additional fundraising in 2003, an additional chunk in matching funds, your money via the Federal Election Commission, after January 1, 2004. All they have to do is schedule the events at Mr. Reiner's home and folks will show up.

MAKING THE BLOOD FLOW

Dean was the foot stomping, hand clapping, and heart-pounding candidate at the Democrat National Committee meeting last weekend. His give 'em hell rouser had them roused. "Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean ignited a meeting of party activists by telling them to 'stand for something' or fall again to President Bush," gushes AP White House Correspondent Ron Fournier.

JESSE’S GIRL

Breaking with tradition of hands off till the party has a nominee, the DNC’s chair of their Voting Rights Institute Donna Brazile "organized a meeting immediately after Dean’s address between her fellow black activists and Dean."

Brazile did not just fall off the back of the hay wagon. She was Jesse Jackson’s deputy campaign manager in 1984, a Dukakis campaign leader in 1988, and Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000. For more on Brazile, go to: http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=donna+brazile

Continue reading/discuss The Dwinell Political Report ...

Via reader Chris Curtis comes interesting article which details Kerry's appeal (or lack thereof) in New Hampshire. The article concludes that the biggest threat to Kerry is Howard Dean:

"Indeed, it's Dean, the physician/politician, who seems the most in sync with the primary electorate (especially after having doubled Kerry's 2002 itinerary with more than 20 visits to New Hampshire). At the center of Dean's campaign is his success in Vermont providing what the likes of Kerry and Gephardt have been unable to deliver in Washington: affordable health insurance for children and needy adults. Quite a calling card to a Democratic electorate that considers affordable healthcare the number-one issue, according to the Marist poll."

Continue reading/discuss Is New Hampshire really "Kerry Country"? ...

OK, some humor amidst the serious business of running for President. James Stevens sent an idea to Ben & Jerry's webiste for "Vanilla Dean Ice-cream". Good free press can't hurt, right...

"A good ole fashioned vanilla bean ice-cream inspired by Gov. Howard Dean (who will hopefully become our 44th President). It would be special because this Vanilla "Dean" ice-cream has returned to the same quality and standards we have expected but are not receiving from the current vanilla bean ice-creams running the Vanilla Bean Party of the ice-cream industry. Or you could say it “represents the Vanilla Bean wing of the Vanilla Bean party“."

Continue reading/discuss "Vanilla Dean Ice-cream" ...

This is another example of a principled stand by Dean on an issue. Excerpt follows:

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said Tuesday he would work to "link human rights and trade policy" as he cultivated support from labor leaders to his outsider campaign for president.
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"The WTO is going to have to care about more than just economic transactions. They're going to have to care about human rights," Dean said during an impromptu gathering with reporters.

Dean was among the last of the presidential candidates to make their way to the labor group's winter meetings. Union leaders heard from Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois on Monday.

As the story noted, Dean was at the AFL-CIO meeting this Tuesday, but we haven't yet gotten any transcripts or reports. Send us email if you spot one so we can put it up for all to peruse...

Continue reading/discuss Dean says he wants to link human rights and trade policy ...

 Dean PBS Newshour interview

Continue reading/discuss video: PBS News Hour interview 2/25/03 ...

PBS' News Hour has been conducting a series of interviews with the presidential candidates. Here's the transcript of Dean's interview with Gwen Ifill (linnk courtesy of reader Philip Green) - the topic is heavily weighted towards Iraq and foreign policy:

GWEN IFILL: Last night we heard from Congressman Richard Gephardt. Tonight we talk with former Vermont governor Howard dean. He is 54 years old, a New York City native, and a graduate of Yale University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. After his medical residency, he and his wife, who is also a physician, set up an internal medicine practice in Vermont. He was first elected to the state legislature in 1983. Four years later, he was elected lieutenant governor, rising to governor in 1991, when Republican Richard Snelling died of a heart attack in office. Dean was easily reelected three times. He left office this year to run full time for the Democratic nomination. Howard Dean joins us from the campaign trail in Miami, Florida. Welcome, Governor.

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: Thanks, Gwen.

GWEN IFILL: You have said that the president has not made his case for leading an attack or starting an attack in Iraq. Why don't you make your case against that for us?

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: Sure. I think there's a high threshold for a unilateral attack, and the United States has traditionally set the moral tone for foreign policy in the world. My view of this is since Iraq is not an imminent danger to the United States, the United States should not unilaterally attack Iraq. Iraq does not have nuclear weapons. They do not have much of a nuclear program, if they have one at all left. And they have not... there is not any particular evidence that is convincing that they have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. All those three things would constitute, in my view, a reason to defend our country by unilaterally attacking. But those are not the cases. Sec. Powell and the president have not made those cases well.

We believe... I believe that Iraq does have chemical and biological weapons, and they are a threat to many nations in the region, but not to the United States. Therefore in my view, the United States ought not to attack unilaterally. The United Nations should disarm Saddam, and we should be a part of that effort. The risk for us to unilaterally attack Iraq is that other nations will adopt our policy, and I can very easily see perhaps the Chinese saying one day, "well, Taiwan presents an imminent threat, and therefore we have the right to attack Taiwan." What we do matters, and morals matter in foreign policy.

GWEN IFILL: Governor, by my count, you just used some version of the word "unilateral" six times in that response. If... the president would argue he is not favoring a unilateral attack, that he has support from Britain and other nations and is now going to the United Nations for a second resolution. Under what circumstances could you imagine a multilateral attack?

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: Well, I think that the United Nations makes it clear that Saddam has to disarm, and if he doesn't, then they will disarm him militarily. I have no problem with supporting a United Nations attack on Iraq, but I want it to be supported by the United Nations. That's a well-constituted body. The problem with the so-called multilateral attack that the president is talking about is an awful lot of countries, for example, like Turkey-- we gave them $20 billion in loan guarantees and outright grants in order to secure their permission to attack. I don't think that's the right way to put together a coalition. I think this really has to be a world matter. Saddam must be disarmed. He is as evil as everybody says he is. But we need to respect the legal rights that are involved here. Unless they are an imminent threat, we do not have a legal right, in my view, to attack them.

GWEN IFILL: Governor, you have criticized other Democrats in the race for seeming to support the president by voting for the use-of-force resolution last October in Congress, yet you say that you support... you would support... you'd be willing to support a United Nations-backed effort to disarm Saddam Hussein. How is that different from what the people in Congress voted for?

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: What they voted for was to allow the president of the United States to attack Iraq unilaterally without going back to Congress. So the four folks that I'm running against who are from Congress all voted to give the president that power. The objection that I have... the greatest objection is for the folks that voted for it and then went to Iowa and California and pretended they are against the war. That doesn't wash. We're not going to elect a president of the United States but nominating somebody who says one thing and does something else, and appears to be willing to say whatever it takes to become president. That's a guarantee that we won't beat George Bush that way. We have got to stick to our guns. We've got to defend our positions, and we've got to be proud of our positions.

GWEN IFILL: Are you supportive of the second resolution, which is now apparently making its way to the United Nations Security Council?

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: Sure. Look, I don't have a problem with the second resolution because the United Nations will ultimately make the decision about how Saddam is to be disarmed. My own preference is that we give the inspectors some more time-- we're making some progress there-- but that if Saddam refuses, for example, to destroy the missiles as the United Nations has demanded, then I think the United Nations is going to have an obligation to disarm him. I think our role in this has been pretty awful. We really have made it more difficult for the United States to carry out its policies by alienating practically everyone, including our friends, in regard to this matter of Iraq, and I think that's a mistake. I think it would have been a lot easier for us had the president not last July essentially declared that we were going to go in, and if people didn't like it, that was too bad for them. That was the wrong way to handle it.

GWEN IFILL: It sounds more like you disagree with our approach to this war than to the idea of waging war.

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: We need... well, I disagree with unilateral war. At this point, I don't think it's justified and I don't think the case has been made. I don't disagree with disarming Saddam. I support that. I think the proper folks to do that are the United Nations, and we should be part of that.

GWEN IFILL: Is Saddam Hussein, in your opinion, an immediate threat now?

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: No. If he were, I would advocate unilateral action. That's... the whole point I'm trying to make is unless he possesses a way of attacking the United States, either by giving weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, which the president has not made the case for, or by having a nuclear program, then he's not an imminent threat.

Here is my biggest concern: North Korea is about to go nuclear on this president's watch, because he refuses to discuss the matter with them. That is a far greater danger to the United States, and frankly, far more likely to lead us into war sooner than any danger posed by Iraq. And of course, the greatest danger remains al-Qaida, which this president is not committing the resources to, is not dealing with the Saudis' funding of terror and the Saudis' funding of schools which teach small children in Islamic countries to hate Americans, Christians and Jews, which is the next, second generation of terrorists and suicide bombers. The important problems, the real important threats to the United States-al-Qaida and North Korea-- are not being dealt with. They are being put on the back burner because of this president's obsession with unilateral disarmament of Iraq, which is not a threat to the United States.

GWEN IFILL: Pardon me. So if you say that if you were president, you would back-burner Iraq and put North Korea on the front burner?

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: My strategy for dealing with Iraq, as president, would be to contain them, to continue to push the United Nations to disarm them, and then to open talks with North Korea with the impetus... I have a four-point plan which I outlined last weekend at Drake University, and it essentially includes beginning bilateral talks, having an interim solution where both parties agree that, "A," the United States will not attack North Korea, and "B," that the North Koreans will not develop nuclear weapons during the talks; and then beginning the process of the five-power talks including South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and the United States to deal with this threat. That is a very serious threat. Under no circumstances can North Korea be allowed to possess nuclear weapons, and they are about to do it because this president isn't paying enough attention.

GWEN IFILL: You are a physician. You were governor of a very small state for some years. What in your background prepares you to be president of the United States?

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: I can balance the budget. No person in this race, including Pres. Bush, has balanced a budget. When he was governor of Texas, the system in Texas makes it so that the lieutenant governor actually runs the budget. So I'm actually the only person in this race that has balanced a budget. That's a critical issue. We have... we have pursued what I call the argentine fiscal plan: Borrow and spend, borrow and spend, and borrow and spend. Our children are going to pay for that, and we need to do better than that. Health insurance is a big issue. I'm the only one that has ever delivered a health insurance plan -- investing in small children, creation of jobs-- governors get to do those kinds of things, and I have an advantage there.

GWEN IFILL: I guess what I'm asking specifically is your foreign policy background.

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: Well, first, I have more foreign policy background than Pres. Bush, Pres. Clinton, Pres. Reagan, or Pres. Carter did when they got there. I have been in over 50 countries, lived abroad, and fortunately have an extraordinarily strong team of advisors which have been working with me for a year to develop my views on foreign policy.

GWEN IFILL: You have gained a reputation now as the antiwar candidate. How do you... if that gets... stirs some hearts, gets blood running among democratic activists, and you were to be elected president, how would you govern a nation that appears to support action?

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: I don't think... I think the nation is actually exactly where I am. There was apparently a poll in the New York Times today, which I haven't seen, which said that most Americans believe that we should disarm Iraq with the United Nations. That's what I've been saying since last July. I think the president's mistaken. I think the four folks I'm running against from Congress are mistaken.

GWEN IFILL: Is Iraq a litmus test issue in this year's election?

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: I don't know. I think we will have dealt with Iraq one way or the other before we get to the primaries. I believe either the president, as determined as he is to make war, will do so shortly, or the United Nations will in fact disarm Saddam, probably through peaceful means. And I think that will be a settled issue before the first caucus in Iowa.

GWEN IFILL: Gov. Dean, thank you very much for joining us.

FMR. GOV. HOWARD DEAN: Thanks very much, Gwen.

Continue reading/discuss transcript: PBS News Hour interview 2/25/03 ...

The media, grasping for easy characterizations, has cast Kucinich as the "anti-Dean" and heavies like TNR have claimed that Kucinich is Howard Dean's worst nightmare. Hardly! Besides being a world of difference in their anti-war positions, Kucinich has enormous poliitical baggage that Dean is completely unencumbered with. Joshua Micah Marshall points to a Cleveland Magazine article - it seems that besides Kucinich's noted flipflops on abortion, he has a history of playing racial politics:

Basically, in the early days -- before he was running citywide, let alone nationwide -- Kucinich's political schtick was posing as the champion of the 'forgotten' white ethnic voters over against the rising force of black political power. Sort of a great white hope type, or great Slavic hope, if you will.

There was plenty of acrimony between blacks and white ethnic voters in Northern cities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. So it was fertile political ground. And playing on that divide for political gain was not at all uncommon. That fissure, after all, was one of the things that broke apart the Democrats' coalition in the North. Kucinich didn't create it. But at the time some pols chose to play to it while others didn't.

Now, what does it mean? This was a long time ago. And at the time Kucinich was, almost literally, a kid. When he was elected Mayor later in the decade I think he was still only 31. Plenty of folks from the South who are still active in politics today -- many of whom now get lots of black votes -- were still segregationists in the early 1960s. So people do change their stripes. And bygones often get considered bygones.

I think Daily Kos has it right when he says that Kucinich should immediately withdraw from the running. Whatever his motivations, it's too much baggage for a realistic candidate to carry.

Continue reading/discuss Kucinich should withdraw ...

William Saletan effortlessly flays DeLay alive on the altar of his own words:

That was bad enough, but Dean wasn't finished. He suggested that the United States should curb its warlike impulses to avoid offending other countries. "The White House has bombed its way around the globe," he sneered. "International respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly." As for the current war plan, Dean complained that "no one wants us to be there" and that the president's crusade "has made the Russians jittery and has harmed [our] standing in the world."

Then there was the creepy way Dean kept referring to the president. He called the showdown "Bush's undeclared war" and "Bush's bombing campaign." He described it as something "the president has put us into" and warned his audience, "We should think very, very seriously whether we are going to take ownership of the bombing"—as though the president weren't the nation's commander in chief. He urged Congress to de-fund the war and "pull out the forces we now have in the region."

Dean essentially called the United States the war's villain. Once a U.S.-led coalition "starts meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign nations, where does it stop?" he asked. He charged that we were "starting to resemble a power-hungry imperialist army" and portrayed our mission as an "occupation by foreigners."

Dean even defended the enemy's defiance of the international community. It was unfair and unrealistic of the United States, he suggested, to demand that a dictator "agree to allow foreign troops … to have free rein over the entire country." This was like asking him to "slit his throat with his own people," said Dean. "No wonder" the dictator refused.

OOPS. Actually, replace "Dean" with "DeLay" and replace "Bush" with "Clinton" and replace "Iraq" with "Kosovo" ... heh heh. Delay made these remarks four years ago and now accuses Dean of being unfit for office on the basis of the same arguments.

This piece in the Houston Press from 1999 (a wonderful liberal weekly, I read it religiously) also provides further documentation about DeLay's penchant for reality distortion:

[DeLay] had graduated from the University of Houston at the height of the Vietnam conflict in 1970, but chose to enlist in the war on cockroaches, fleas and termites as the owner of an exterminator business, rather than going off to battle against the Vietcong.

He and Quayle, DeLay explained to the assembled media in New Orleans, were victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself. Satisfied with the pronouncement, which dumbfounded more than a few of his listeners who had lived the sixties, DeLay marched off to the convention.

"Who was that idiot?" asked a TV reporter who arrived at the end of the media show. When he was told the name, it drew a blank. DeLay at that time was a national nobody, and his claim that blacks and browns crowded him and other good conservatives out of Vietnam seemed so outlandish and self-serving that no one bothered to file a news report on the congressman's remarks."

(via Atrios)

Continue reading/discuss Dean Defense Forces: Tom Delay = appeasement hypocrite ...

Michael Tomansky, writing for The American Prospect has a good article about some of the “just an ultra-liberal dove” coverage that Howard Dean has gotten in the media (and I’m looking right at you, New Republic) and why that label not only fails to describe Dean, but also totally misses why Dean is catching on with so many Democratic (and Independent) voters.

He astutely notes that Beltway media types tend to focus on ideology first. They see a candidate’s position on one or two things and label that person “liberal” or “conservative” based on those positions. Sometimes, that works, but with a candidate like Dean, it fails utterly. Such an approach also fails to capture a candidate’s ability to project a personality and to relate to voters—a factor that frequently trumps ideology. This is especially true of Dean:

But to see Dean's appeal to hard-shell Democrats as chiefly ideological is to miss entirely what's important about his presence in this race. His appeal is mainly emotional. He is telling beleaguered party loyalists -- sick to death of counting up their party leaders' wretched misjudgments and capitulations over the last two years -- that here is one Democrat who wasn't a part of that train wreck and who just isn't afraid of Republicans. This is why Dean matters. When he says, "I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," there is, to be sure, an ideological element to it; but it's a phrase laced with far more electricity than ideology.

Pundits and experts don't see it this way because they only know how to interpret things ideologically -- Dean is positioning himself to the left of this one and the right of that one. The ideology-is-everything lens can lead to some silly assertions, such as The New Republic's recently offered opinion that Dennis Kucinich's (D-Ohio) entry into the race "leaves Howard Dean without a constituency" (because Kucinich is also anti-war and quirkily conservative here and there). This would be spot-on true -- if the two were both pieces of paper rather than human beings.

I suspect that many potential voters were first attracted to Dean because of his stance on the war and if that were all he had to offer, then that might not be enough to hold on to those voters or, indeed, remain relevant. But Dean is not a one-trick pony. He is certainly going to surprise some folks…

One last paragraph from the article—it is particularly good, I think:

My impression of Dean is that he is a liberal-leaning but pragmatic executive whose medical training has made him more of a task-oriented problem solver than a dreamer anxious to uncork the next New Deal. If he's going to get the media to take him seriously, he has to put that Dean on display alongside the fire breather, and maintaining the balance between the two will be a challenge.

Continue reading/discuss What the media doesn't get about Howard Dean ...

New Hampshire Poll of 600 likely Democratic primary voters, January 2004. MOE +/- 4.1%

Candidate	% of Vote	Favorable	Unfavorable	Unfamiliar	Could Never Vote For
Kerry	26%	71%	10%	16%	4%
Dean	13	43	4	51	7
Gephardt	11	58	22	17	8
Lieberman	9	62	25	12	11
Edwards	2	26	10	63	5
Moseley-Braun	2	25	16	57	9
Hart	2	33	45	20	9
Kucinich	1	8	6	85	5
Sharpton	1	9	53	37	30
Clark	1	10	8	80	4
Graham	0.4	20	16	62	4
Other	4				1
Not Sure	29				5

May not total 100% due to rounding (edited by Aziz using HTML Tidy)

Continue reading/discuss Kerry Leading New Hampshire; Dean, in Second. ...

Coming out of the DNC cattle call shute with the momentum, the media is still trying to figure out a way to cast Dean in an "AntiWar'" mold, boxing him in:

Candidates Gephardt, Lieberman Kerry and Edwards are counting on the war to be history by the time next year's Iowa’s caucuses roll around. But as they start out on the trail, it is Dean who not only is in sync with Democratic voters and fundraisers on an issue they care passionately about, but who is coming off as bold and authentic in comparison to the carefully scripted members of Congress.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff put out similar poll numbers last week and gleefully predicted a "Democratic Party meltdown" over the Iraq issue. The conventional wisdom is that the Democratic anti-war message is too far to the left and candidates who articulate it will be badly positioned in a general election.

But Dean isn't holding a "far left" stance, even though the Republicans are portraying it as such. The new Gallup poll out, shows just how centrist Dean's position on invading Iraq remains. The polll also shows how alienated that Bush and the other Democrats (especially) are on their pro-invasion stance. The centrist UN approach that Dean advocates for is quite different from the avid war protesting group that's against invading Iraq even with the UN's approval.



Dean, by advocating for the UN's approval, is positioned with the majority, either way:

These results underscore the pivotal role that a new United Nations vote can have in helping Americans formalize their views on the pending war. As can be seen, about two-thirds of Americans (66%) can be characterized as opposing a war without a new U.N. vote. At the same time, about the same number (70%) can be characterized as supporting the war if the United Nations does in fact authorize it. Right now, it is unclear whether the United States can get enough votes in the U.N. Security Council -- without a veto from France, Russia, or China, -- to get that authorization.

These results are very similar to those reviewed above based on an analysis of the intensity of public opinion. About 3 out of 10 Americans are on either end of the spectrum -- those who generally support war regardless of what the U.N. does and/or are unlikely to change their minds, versus those who generally oppose war regardless of what the U.N. does and/or are also unlikely to change their minds. The remainder have more mixed feelings about the situation, and can be swayed by the specific conditions under which movement toward war may come about.

In otherwords, amongst the partisans, the war is a wash of deep conviction, whereas amongst the 40% in the middle, it's just not an issue they are involved with deeply.

Continue reading/discuss Dr. Dean Emerges From The Pack ...

House majority leader Tom DeLay, a truly dispicable charachter and a chicken-hawk who claimed there were no spots for him in Vietnam because poor minorities had taken them all, attacks Gov. Dean for his stance on Iraq:

Meeting with reporters in his Capitol office, Mr. DeLay said the Democrats were pursuing a "reckless strategy" in fighting the war and singled out Dr. Dean, a presidential candidate who last week accused President Bush of trying to wage a unilateral war.

"I saw his speech on C-Span, and I think it was outrageous," Mr. DeLay said. "He either doesn't know what he's talking about when he says we're going to take unilateral action, or he's seriously uninformed, or he's just misleading the American people and his party."

Dr. Dean disqualified himself for national leadership, Mr. DeLay said, by suggesting that the decision to go to war should be made by the United Nations. "If he wants to be president of the United States, but subject the United States to decisions by the U.N., he lacks the sound judgment needed for responsible national leadership," Mr. DeLay said.

DeLay basically says that anyone who disagrees with his hard line is disqualified from the presidency, which is a novel view of the Constitution.

Talk about a badge of honor for Dean!

Continue reading/discuss Dean draws fire from DeLay ...

Teddy Davis sends in this transcript of an item that appeared on Buchanan & Press yesterday. Teddy writes:

Craig Crawford of The Hotline called Dean "the bull of the cattle calls," correctly pointing out that Dean has done the best at every cattle call of the season from Linn County to NARAL to the DNC Winter Meeting.

There was also criticism of Dean for his foreign policy pronouncements.

I think Dean's foreign policy speech at Drake University was well-thought through and offered an inspiring vision of a tough but smart foreign policy. But Dean's critics have a point when they point out the inconsistencies in his off-the-cuff comments.

The campaign needs to direct people towards his official position.

I think Teddy's analysis is spot-on. Dean needs to explain his positions clearly, because at present they do make him look vulnerable. Here is the transcript:

PRESS: They [ABC NEWS "THE NOTE"] say the big winner was Howard Dean, followed closely by Dick Gephardt, followed closely by John Edwards, but that Dean walked away with the prize of the delegates there. Do you agree?

CRAWFORD: Yes. And that's been the case in all these cattle calls.

He is by no -- there's just no question he is the bull of the cattle calls. He has been winning them all, no matter where it is, here in Washington or out in Iowa. And we've got another one coming in New Hampshire Thursday.

The thing about Dean is, he is coming across to these Democrats -- of course, this was DNC, the platoon leaders from around the country. He is coming across as the No. 1 liberal in the race and a straight talker on the war on Iraq. And I think he has been in that free zone for insurgents, where nobody really criticizes him or challenges what they say, but that needs to happen.

PRESS: But, if I could follow up on that, the read is, from people that I have talked to, is that, because of his stance on the war -- and Iowa has a big peace -- or anti-war, let's say, delegation among Democrats there -- and because of his being a governor to Vermont, a neighbor state to New Hampshire, that Howard Dean could win Iowa and could win New Hampshire.

(CROSSTALK)

PRESS: Wouldn't that give him a huge leg up?

CRAWFORD: Well, of course. You ask a lot of DNC members at this thing Saturday, you think he could win Iowa and New Hampshire? Yes, sure. Do you think he could win the nomination? No, he couldn't win the nomination. I don't know how you square that one.

(LAUGHTER)

BUCHANAN: They better wake it up, yes. Listen...

CRAWFORD: But on the war, there are some real questions about his position. He is coming across as a straight talker. But if you look at what he said, it's all over the lot.

BUCHANAN: But, look, it seems to me, what he is doing -- there's a couple of routes to the nomination. One is the establishment route, which Kerry has taken. Lieberman has got to take it. But there is a populist liberal anti-war route. And on that track, you have got basically two guys, Kucinich and Dean.

And Dean got out there first. And is he far up that track. And that track got the nomination -- he didn't win in November -- for one George Stanley McGovern. And it seems to so me, Dean is doing -- going the one way he can go and the only way he can go and win this nomination

CRAWFORD: Well, one thing he is doing is, he's protected himself in the words for later on if he does want to moderate, because, if you look at what he is saying, guys, it's not as clear and it's certainly not as anti-war as he is given credit for.

Just last week, for example, on Thursday, he talked to one reporter who quoted him, saying that he supported war if the U.N. approved it and sent troops. He is adding that qualification. They have to send troops. The very next day, he gave an interview and said just the opposite, said under no circumstances did he support military action.

BUCHANAN: But, look, the point is that, frankly, the war has got to go badly, it seems to me, for Howard Dean to win this. In other words, people have got to be anti-war by the time the primary has got to come around next year or they're not going to go with him. If it's a big success, it's Kerry and Lieberman and these guys. And so he is betting on that.

And it seems to me, he is the only guy betting over there. And it's not a bad bet, since all the other guys are on the other horse.

CRAWFORD: He is definitely the contrarian.

Continue reading/discuss Buchanan and Press: Dean is the "Bull" of the cattle calls ...

Many people may not be aware that the Dean campaign has an official Dean Mailing List (signup form in the lower left sidebar). But this is ot the only email resource for Dean supporters - the New York for Dean gang have set up a new mailing list, called Dean in the News. This will be devoted to Dean news articles in the press and media. There is also a new Students for Dean group, called Generation Dean. Finally, we have been plugging the Dean Meetups for some time now - this is a fantastic resource to help Dean supporters self-organize on the local scale. There are 2327 people signed up for Dean Meetups as of this writing - compared to only 507 for Kerry and 325 for Edwards.

Continue reading/discuss Dean mailing lists ...

Michael Tomasky here, filling in for Eric Alterman (author of What Liberal Media?) praises Dean's stance on foreign policy at Altercation blog:

Howard Dean says it wonderfully in a major foreign-policy speech he delivered in Iowa on Monday. He comes as close as I’ve heard any Democrat come to laying out some of the above; he even takes a punch at Colin Powell for the “sketchiness” of his evidence.

Dean is far and away the most serious of the Democratic candidates to this point. Of course, he benefits from the dynamic of being behind and needing to win press notices, so he has to say attention-getting things that will differentiate him from the pack. If he gains ground, will he then trim his sails and speak more cautiously? We can’t know, but we know right now that he’s the only one saying virtually all the things a Democrat ought to say. My ticket right now is Dean-Clark, as in General Wesley, profiled by moi in the current American Prospect but the story is strangely un-linkable.

However, a reader of Alterman's has some critique of Dean regarding his (lack of?) stance on the Israel/Palestinian issue. They write:

Dean recently told the Jewish newspaper, FORWARD, that when it comes to Israel, “I stand with AIPAC.” And he hired a former President of AIPAC, Steve Grossman, as his finance director. That means that he essentially shares the worldview of those who support this war. And it means that he will join AIPAC in in blocking any moves toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

AIPAC is a hawkish group which does not support negotiations as a means of resolving the conflict in Israel/Palestine. Dean's hardline on the matter is not surprising, but he certainly hasn't gone out of his way to address the issue. Personally speaking, I think AIPAC is wrong, but this isn't about my beliefes, it's about Dean. Can anyone find documentation in speeches or other media about what Dean's opinions are regarding Israel/Palestine? Given that there is no mention ofthe conflict on his campaign website, it's important that we find out. Whether or not one agrees or disagrees, knowing where he stands is important.

UPDATE: David of the NYC group clarifies the role of AIPAC:

I think it is probably unfair (and potentially harmful to Dean) to characterize AIPAC simply as "a hawkish group which does not support negotiations as a means of resolving the conflict in Israel/Palestine." AIPAC's history is a somewhat more complicated. During the `90s, under the leadership of Steve Grossman (the man who is now Dean's finance director), AIPAC supported Oslo. But, both before & after Grossman, AIPAC's leadership has definitely been more hawkish and wary of peace negotiations. (As an aside, it's worth noting that even though the vast majority of Israelis support a two-state solution, most now also are reluctant to re-engage in negotiations with the present Palestinian leadership.)

This piece in the American Prospect is critical of AIPAC, but I think it does shed light on the organization's evolution over the years. And even though AIPAC's leadership may stand to the right of many American Jews, many of the rank-and-file members do not. Therefore, I think it is reasonable to say both that you support AIPAC and that you support peace negotiations and/or the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Continue reading/discuss Dean's foreign policy: what about Israel/Palestine? ...

Joe Klein, who on Meet the Press had such positive comments about Dean, is in denial. Ina lengthy TIME piece ostensibly about defending Richard Gephardt, he is unable to resist praising Dean:

There is a certain sadness to watching both men work this time around — especially in Iowa last week, where peace is the issue, hot is the style, and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean is rapidly becoming the flavor of the month. Ask an Iowa Democrat about Gephardt or Lieberman, and the most common reaction is a sigh. Meanwhile, Dean is wicked fun, a candidate who works without text and without net, excoriating his fellow Democrats for supporting President Bush on Iraq (while cleverly leaving a way to support Bush himself — if Saddam is found to be developing nukes, and if the United Nations is willing to go along). Dean speaks English, not focus group or legislatese. He sounds fresh — and last Friday, in Washington, he set the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting ablaze. "My name is Howard Dean," he said, after firing off a fusillade of examples of Democratic wimpiness, "and I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

By contrast, Gephardt and Lieberman, and North Carolina Senator John Edwards, seem to be moving, and talking, in slow motion. All three spend a fair amount of time telling their personal stories, which are compelling. All three say they are fighting for average folks like their parents. All three voted with the President on Iraq and try to confront that issue straight on. Edwards is best at this: "I know you don't agree with me on Iraq," he told an audience in Indianola, Iowa, which seemed to be entirely composed of peace activists, "but I want to tell you directly, from my own mouth, why I feel the way I do about this." And then Edwards — Gephardt and Lieberman do almost exactly the same — said Saddam is a real threat who needs to be disarmed, but quickly moved on to the President's "cowboy mentality" and diplomatic depredations: "Your family is safer in a world where people look up to America than in a world where we are hated." At this, an elderly woman named Jane Majors scribbled a sign with Magic Marker and held it above her head: BUT WAR WILL MAKE THEM HATE US MORE.

And so there's a tortoise-and-hare quality to the campaign. Dean dashing, the others slogging along, ducking brickbats and trying to explain themselves.

I repeat, this piece is supposed to be about Richard Gephardt. But since Klein actually refers to Gephardt as "macaroni and cheese" and the best he can say about him is "Poor Gephardt: put a microphone in front of him and he sounds like he's trying to climb the down escalator." Klein argues that Gephardt's qualities of experience and plain-speaking are key to a winning strategy, but looking at Dean's record as an executive branch leader, and Klein's admitted awe of Dean's plain english, its clear that Dean fits these qualities far better. We just have to wait for Klein to wake up and realise who he really is in love with.

Continue reading/discuss Joe Klein can't help himself ...

Following is the text of former Vermont Governor Howard Dean's remarks at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting.

DEAN: First, let me thank my wonderful and loyal advance team. (And did you all like the maple syrup and the cheese and all that stuff?

What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq.

What I want to know is why are Democratic Party leaders supporting tax cuts. The question is not how the big tax should be, the question should be can we afford a tax cut at all of the largest deficit in the history of this country.

What I want to know is why we're fighting in Congress about the patients' bill of rights when the Democratic Party ought to be standing up for health care for every single American man, woman and child in this country.

What I want to know is why our folks are voting for the president's No Child Left Behind bill that leaves every child behind, every teacher behind, every school board behind and every property taxpayer behind.

I'm Howard Dean, and I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

If you want young people to vote in this country and if you want the 50 percent of adults over 30 to vote in this country that do not vote in today's election, then we had better stand for something, because that's why they're not voting.

Let me tell you what I want to do for America and what we've done in Vermont. I do want to balance the budget. There has not been one Republican president that has balanced the budget in this country in 34 years. And if you want someone who can be responsible for your money and take care of your tax dollars, you had better elect a Democrat, because the Republicans cannot manage money.

In our state, I had the privilege of serving long enough so I served through two recessions, not one recession. And when all that money was coming in, in between the recessions, between the two Bush recessions... Well, that's what they were.

When all that money was coming in during the good times, thanks to Bill Clinton's being willing to balance the budget, without a single Republican Party vote, when all that money was coming in, we did give some tax cuts, but we also saved money in the rainy day fund, we paid down a quarter of our debt. And today, not only is the budget balanced in these very difficult times, but my successor does not have to cut health care, does not have to cut higher education and does not have to cut K-12 education.

I'm the only governor running for president, and I'm the only one that's balanced a budget, including George Bush, because in Texas the lieutenant governor's in charge of balancing the budget.

In our state, virtually every child under the age of 18 has health insurance. We made Medicaid into a middle-class entitlement. If I become president with your help, the first item of business on our agenda is to do something that Harry Truman put in the Democratic platform in 1948. We're going to bring health insurance to every man, woman and child in America. I'm the only doctor in this race. And I've done it.

I want an environmental policy in this country that respects and preserves public lands, not drill in them. In our state, we've preserved hundreds of thousands of acres that will always be available for hunting and fishing and trapping and hiking and canoeing. It will never be developed. The Vermont that I left as governor in January of this year will be the same Vermont 100 years from now, because we have stewarded our natural resources. And this president would like to drill on our natural resources. We can do better than that.

Let me tell you something else I'm going to do. One of the things that I thought was terrific about Bill Clinton was that when he became president in 1992, he said that his Cabinet would look like the rest of America. And he did it. And he did it.

I want all of our institutions of higher learning, our law schools, our medical schools, our best universities to look like the rest of America. And I thought that one of the most despicable moments of this president's administration was three weeks ago, when on national prime-time television, he used the word ``quota'' seven times. The University of Michigan does not now have quotas. It has never had quotas. Quotas is a race-loaded word, designed to appeal to people's fears of losing their jobs.

I intend to talk about race during this election in the South because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I'm going to bring us together. Because you know what? You know what? White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don't have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too.

I'm not done yet. Yeah! Most of you know that six months before my last re-election, I signed a bill into law that made Vermont the first state in America that guaranteed equal rights to every person under the law.

That bill was called the Civil Unions bill, and it said marriage is between a man and woman, but same-sex couples are entitled to exactly the same legal rights as I have, hospital visitation, insurance, inheritance rights. All Americans are equal under the law in our state.

This bill was at about 40 percent in the polls when I signed it, 60 percent against six months before the election. And I never got a chance to ask myself whether it was a good idea to sign this bill or not. Because I knew that if I were willing to sell out the rights of a whole group of people because it was politically inconvenient for some future office I might run for, then I had wasted my time in public service.

Because I looked in the mirror and I knew that if my political career were about myself that I would not have signed that bill. But my political career has never been about getting elected. I didn't even seek the governorship. I became governor because my predecessor died in office 12 years ago.

My political career is about change. And this campaign is about change. What we're going to do here is, we're first going to change this party. Because this party needs to look in the mirror and ask itself: ``Is this party about the next election or is it about changing America--about changing America?''

This party needs to be about changing America, because only by changing America will we win back the White House.

I want a party that stands unashamedly for equal rights for all Americans. I want a party that stands unashamedly for health care for single American. I want a party that stands unashamedly for balanced budgets and taking care of poor kids and voting together and healing the divides, instead of expressing the divides and exploiting them the way the Republican Party has so shamelessly done since 1968.

I need your help. I need your help. We're going to change this party. And then, we're going to change this country. And we're going to take back the White House. And we're going to balance the budget. And we're going to have health care for everybody. And we're going to have an America with its best institutions right up to the Cabinet that looks, once again, like America. We're going to bring hope to America, jobs to America, peace to America. We're going to bring pride to the Democratic Party. I need your help.

Let's go get it. Let's go do it. Let's win the White House in January of 2004.

Thank you very much.

Continue reading/discuss Text of Howard Dean's DNC speech ...

Dean's appearance at the DNC has drawn an amazing amount of press and media coverage. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has an article titled "Howard Dean Gets Hot" with links to stories and headlines from various newspapers and magazines around the country. In addition to print coverage, Dean got praise from Bob Schieffer and Joe Klein on Face the Nation - here is a transcript of their laudatory remarks (thanks to Teddy Davis):

KLEIN: ...as when we make predictions, but I--I got to say I was at the--the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, meetings in Washington on Friday and Saturday--well, on Friday, and Howard Dean, the governor of Vermont came in and he just blew those people away. It was one of the most effective speeches I've ever seen a candidate give. Now he doesn't have foreign policy experience, but I think that at the very least, he is going to sharpen up the other candidates and he's going to make this a very, very interesting race.
...
SCHIEFFER: In every successful political contest, you will find a phrase or a one-liner that catches the public's attention, a few words that, agree or disagree, caused you to say, 'Hey, did you hear what so-and-so said the other day?' That's why I took notice when I called in from the road last week and a colleague asked, 'Did you hear what Howard Dean said the other day?' Dean, of course, is the Vermont governor and long shot presidential candidate. He had stepped to the microphone at a Democratic National Committee meeting, accused his rivals of trying to copy, rather than challenge, the Bush administration, and then electrified the crowd by saying, 'I'm Howard Dean and I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.'

Now whether his analysis is right or wrong is not the point here. But with that one remark he has separated himself from the growing field of Democrats and won the first 'Did you hear what so-and-so said?' primary. Just ask the better-known and well-financed Dick Gephardt, who formally announced his campaign with a big rally last week. Not many Democrats, though, were asking what he said.

It is a long way from knowing who the Democrats' nominee will be, but if I were one of those other candidates, I'd start keeping an eye on Howard Dean.

In addition, the video of Dean's speech at the DNC event is now available here courtesy CSPAN:

 Dean DNC speech

UPDATE: LeftLeaner.com managed to ask the Washington Post's Terry Neil about Dean. Check out the transcript of the online chat to see what Neil had to say.

Continue reading/discuss Dean's DNC speech draws praise ...

From the James Fallows interview in The Atlantic (in the follow-up questions asked via email)

Governors vs. senators. Mr. Clinton also spoke about the advantage governors have as candidates, based on their real-world operating knowledge. The one governor now in the race is Howard Dean, who is generally believed to be a long-shot. Does President Clinton think that the advantages that come with a governor's background could make Dean a serious contender for the presidency?

Howard Dean has been a good governor. He has done important things, and his background as a governor does bring advantages. However, because I don't plan to endorse a candidate before the party makes its choice, I don't want to 'handicap" the race.

Previously in that interview, Clinton talks about the rumor that he had called Edwards after his Meet The Press interview and told him to "hit the books before you go out in public again." Clinton says that wasn't accuracte, but had a smidgen of truth, and then goes on to give this advice in general to all the Democratic hopefuls:

I told him: John, you're great on TV. You make a great talk. You can talk an owl out of a tree. But my opinion is, presidential elections are won by the strength of the candidate, and having a network of support, and then by the mega message, having the big message. And that it's easier for a governor than a senator to have a big message. It may be easier for a senator than a governor to have the right position on all the issues seriatim.

Every presidential election is really about three things. At the bottom level it's about the specific issues. Then there's the big deal. What's this election about? What's the subject of the election, what's the meta message? And then right at the top is, How do you feel about this person to be President?

It is interesting to discuss how Dean fits these guidelines, arguably better than any other candidate.

Continue reading/discuss Clinton comments on Dean ...

Subject: You're invited to a lunch honoring Governor Howard Dean, M.D.of Vermont, Democratic Candidate For President

Terry Lierman,
Bill Karen Bates,
Pat Carolyn Fulton,
Stephanie Ridder and Dana Singiser

Invite you to a lunch honoring

Governor Howard Dean, M.D. of Vermont
Democratic Candidate for President


Tuesday, March 4, 2003
12:30 to 2:00 pm

Politiki
"Top of the Hill"
319 Pennsylvania Ave., SE
Top Floor
Washington, DC


Host ~ $500 write or raise
Individual ~ $50

Payable to ~ Dean for America

(Please print and fill the contribution form prior to the luncheon)

http://www.deanforamerica.com/downloads/contribution_form.pdf

For more information or to RSVP, please contact Jenny Lehner at
(802) 846-6611 or jlehner@deanforamerica.com

Continue reading/discuss RSVP DC Fundraiser for Dean ...

In an article which focuses on Senator John McCain's opposition to Bush environmental policies, there's a quote from the Senator which acknowledges Dean:

McCain, who loves causing a political stir, shrugs off any perception that he is a disloyal Republican. "I'd like to check with Howard Dean to see if he has any ideas perhaps in the medical area," he said mischievously, referring to the former Vermont governor, a physician, who also is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

Take it any way you want, but the bottom line is that Dean isn't flying under the radar anymore. For someone like McCain (whom many have compared Dean to) to even acknowledge his existence really says something about the threat Howard poses to the Republican establishment. His momentum has continued to build as more people are exposed to his message. This was evident at the DNC's winter meeting, which Aziz blogged about directly below this post. At one point, Dean took the stage to chants of "Howard, Howard!" (I've linked that in the comments section of Aziz's post)

*thanks to Christopher Curtis for the link*

UPDATE: added the direct quote. Also, check out this old post on the DeanBlog for more on Dean and McCain, as well as a truly horrendous pun :) Also see this old Slate article about the Men Who Would be McCain --Aziz

Continue reading/discuss McCain acknowledges Dean ...

Today was the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting, where four of the Presidential candidates for the Dem. nomination made their case to the party leaders. The candidates who attended were Gephardt, Lieberman, Moseley-Braun and Dean. Kerry was also scheduled to appear, but did not make it due to recovery from his recent surgery. Edwards, Sharpton, and Kucinich will also make an appearance later this weekend. The candidates made brief speeches, and as usual Howard came off quite well:

In brief talks to the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting, Rep. Richard Gephardt, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean agreed Bush had been disastrous for the economy and for relations with foreign allies.

But Dean, an outspoken opponent of a potential Iraqi war, opened his speech by asking why Democrats have been so reluctant to challenge Bush on the war, tax cuts and health care policy.

"What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq?" asked Dean, who also questioned why Democrats have not asked tougher questions on the need for tax cuts or fought harder for universal health care.

"I am Howard Dean and I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," Dean said to loud cheers, adding that if the party wanted to attract young people and new voters "we had better stand for something."

Mosely-Braun also got in a great soundbite, saying in reference to Bush's supposed foreign policy advantage, "Duct tape is no substitute for diplomacy." I think underestimating her is a bad idea for Dean, and suddenly I wonder if she would be interested in a VEEP position...

The Washington Post has an article on the meeting as well, with a cogent summary of each candidates' chances and outlook. The article notes that this meeting is extremely important:

Twelve years ago, Bill Clinton lit up a similar gathering in Chicago with a performance that helped propel him to the front of the Democratic ranks. The current candidates know that a strong showing before the Democratic National Committee (DNC) today and Saturday could boost their fundraising, build activist support and attract endorsements that will lend heft to their campaigns.

In addition, Sen. Harkin is reveling in his kingmaker role regarding the upcoming Iowa caucuses, having arranged the schedule for the various "town meeting" opportunities for the candidates:

North Carolina Sen. John Edwards will make the first appearance in April in Polk County, the state's largest. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's representative drew June in Cerro Gordo County in northern Iowa. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean will appear in Davenport in May. Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt will be in Dubuque in July. The Rev. Al Sharpton will be in Sioux City in August, and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman will be in Cedar Rapids in September.

In Iowa, Dean will face a serious challenge from Gephardt, whose candidacy has been met with yawns, but should not be underestimated.

Continue reading/discuss Candidates prostrate before the Party Elders ...

Reiner Endorses Dean for President
The actor-director's backing is a big boost for the little-known Democratic candidate.
By Rachel Abramowitz
Times Staff Writer
February 20, 2003

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's active opposition to an American-led war on Iraq has earned him an early boost in Hollywood's presidential sweepstakes, in the form of an endorsement by director and key Democratic activist Rob Reiner.

"Dean's the only major Democratic candidate speaking out against going to war without the support of the United Nations," said Reiner, who will be the California co-chairman of the Dean campaign. "My urgency to support him right now is to give him as big a forum as possible so that his views can be heard. It's a very dangerous time right now."

Winning Reiner's endorsement is fantastic news for Governor Dean. The endorsement not only raises his profile nationally, it should make a major difference in Dean's ability to raise money. As the article notes:

...Reiner's endorsement had been sought by several Democratic presidential candidates because of his energetic advocacy.

In the last presidential campaign, he hosted or co-hosted at least a dozen fund-raisers for former Vice President Al Gore, including one that raised $4.5 million.

Update: Here’s another article on the Reiner endorsement from Yahoo Financial News.

A particularly nice sample paragraph:

"Governor Dean embodies the absolute best of the Democratic party ideals," said Reiner. "Dean has a stellar record of accomplishment on children's health care and education. Dean delivered for the people of Vermont and I believe he will deliver for America."

Continue reading/discuss Rob Reiner Endorses Dean ...

Several readers have submitted this link to a Jake Tapper profile of Dean in Salon. This ia fairly big news for Dean, it was similar profiles in TNR (The Invisible Man) and TAP (The Darkest Horse) that really launched Dean's grassroots support. Unfortunately, Salon still insist on their Premium nonsense to access material, but you can circumvent this by using a "free pass". I have also sent the article to the UNMEDIA mailing list (feel free to browse/search the public archives).

Caption to the photo: Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, right, answers questions at a gathering in Concord, N.H., Feb. 16. Story excerpt:

...the story Dean wants to tell me happened when he and Romer met with the Democratic House leadership, including House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash., Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., and others. Dean, he recalls, was brash. He remembers telling Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the Democrats' leader on healthcare reform, that he "didn't know what he was talking about." Then, he told Foley that healthcare reform was an issue that needed to be tackled, and that the governors were prepared to lead the way. Foley told him to hold back, that the Democrats wanted to do it at the congressional level.

"Well, why don't you?" Dean asked. Foley told him that the Democrats, who then held more than a 100-seat advantage in the House, didn't have the votes.

"Well, then let us do it at the state level," Dean said. Foley told him that he'd prefer if they didn't.

Exasperated, Dean lashed out, saying, "Well, Mr. Speaker, if I were in charge of an organization that had a 25 percent approval rating, I might move on healthcare one way or another."

There was silence in the room. Finally, Foley smiled. "Actually, it's 27 percent," Foley joked.

Finishing the story, he smiles again. Later, over breakfast at Henry's Diner in Burlington, he says, "It's not a story that reflects well on me. I hope I've matured since those days."

But of course it's a story that reflects quite well on Howard Dean and he knows it. Dean generally uses his blunt comments like an inmate with a shiv. And already, he's used it to set himself apart not only from the bland, cautious Democratic bench of presidential wannabes, but from the bland, cautious Democratic Party in general. In an interesting contrast, when I ask Waxman about Dean's 1991 anecdote -- without telling him where I heard it - Waxman, through a spokesman, followed Washington protocol and praised Dean while denying such an incident ever occurred. Dean's brashness could prove not only refreshing but awfully successful in an era when both the media and the opposition party seem cowed into submission by the White House.

Continue reading/discuss On the campaign trail with the un-Bush ...

Dr. Dean is scheduled to attend the March 5th Meetup in New York! The New York Meetup is the second-largest group after Washington DC, with 92 supporters, so this will be a very exciting opportunity for Dean to see for himself just how strong his netroots are.

William Finkel, who has done a lot of important legwork in getting the Dean Meetup infrastructure setup, writes:

I think the fact and manner in which Dean has embraced Meetup reflects his commitment to grassroots, community and technology. All the candidates are aware of our service, but Governor Dean, personally, understands what we can do. What we can do is exemplified by what our chapters have done; create self-organized, autonomous field units that will be prepared to support the Governor, however he needs, whenever he needs them.

True! The only difference being, that Dean has 1590 supporters signed up, whereas Kerry and Edwards have 499 and 298, respectively (as of this writing). Dean has pledged to try and attend as many Meetups as possible, so it is clear that he understands and appreciates his netroot support. Show yours by attending your regional meetups, and you just might see Dean there too :)

Also, I would like to re-iterate the call for regional Dean groups to post their URL in the sidebar coments, so I can continue to update the list. And, don't forget to get your Dean gear from the DeanShop to wear at the meetup, especially bumper stickers!

Continue reading/discuss Dean to attend NYC Meetup ...

This full text of this transcript was provided by Edward "Teddy" Davis. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an online link, so I'll just reproduce it here in full.

HEADLINE: Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean discusses his emphases on health care and a balanced budget

From NPR in Los Angeles, I'm Tavis Smiley.

On today's program, actress Rene Russo talks about saving Mother Nature one tree at a time. Also, Black Enterprise founder Earl Graves says his money is where his mouth is when it comes to Richard Parsons, AOL Time Warner's chairman and CEO. And I'll sit down with the talented Ben Vereen.

But first, we continue our series of discussions with announced candidates for president of the United States. Yesterday we spoke with Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman. Today, physician and former Democratic Vermont Governor Howard Dean. A self-described commonsense moderate, Dean signed a law legalizing civil unions for gays, but also has the stamp of approval from the National Rifle Association for his opposition to strong federal gun control. I began by asking the Ivy League-educated former governor why he wanted to run for president instead of going back to practicing medicine.

Dr. HOWARD DEAN (Democrat, 2004 Presidential Candidate): Tavis, I think the country is fundamentally going in the wrong direction. You know, the president has run up a $350 billion deficit. We can't afford that. He keeps wanting to cut taxes more and more and make the deficit bigger and bigger. The problem with that is it means we are never going to do anything for seniors and their prescription benefits. We're never going to be able to do anything like fund special education so people's property taxes could maybe go down or we'd get more teachers and better-paid teachers. The president is borrowing money from seniors to pay tax cuts to people who don't need them, and he's borrowing money from our children so he can give tax cuts to people who don't need them. I think it's a very, very bad and dangerous direction for this country to be going in.

SMILEY: Vermont, of course, is a gorgeous state, but a small state, not one that allows you necessarily to have a national platform, so your name identity is not that of others in this race. And so you're running behind most Democrats at the moment in the polls. Most think your campaign is a long shot. How are you going to turn that around?

Dr. DEAN: I don't think it's a long shot. I'm the only person running for president that's ever balanced a budget. I'm the only person running for president that's delivered health insurance. Everybody in our state under 18 has health insurance. We can have health insurance for every American if we do it the smart way, the way we've done it in Vermont: not to have the government run it, but simply to help people like small businesses and help kids get health insurance. I have a platform that matters. I'm not interested in running this race so that I can get elected by saying anything anybody wants to hear. I'm going to say exactly what I think people need to hear. People are going to know exactly where I stand on every issue. And I think there's enormous hunger in the Democratic Party for some leadership like that, and as a governor and as a doctor, I have an ability to do that, I think.

SMILEY: As governor, you allowed passage of the first law in the nation allowing civil unions for gays and lesbians--quite controversial in certain quarters of this country. Are you concerned at all, Governor Dean, that America may not be ready for a president with an agenda that is so progressive?

Dr. DEAN: I don't see equal rights for all Americans being all that progressive. The right-wingers will call this gay marriage and all that stuff, which it's not. Our law says marriage is between a man and a woman. But it also says that gays and lesbians have equal rights, same as everybody else. This is an issue that I think the president is horribly deficient on. The president has taken us back a generation in race relations. I was totally shocked when the president of the United States said in a national speech that the University of Michigan used quotas. 'Quotas' is a racially charged buzzword that appeals to latent racism among white people who are afraid that they're going to lose their jobs because some person of color is going to get a position in a law school or a job.

For the president of the United States to use the word 'quotas' in a national speech when he knows very well that the University of Michigan does not now and has never had quotas, I think, is emblematic of what the Republican Party does in this country. They divide us by race. They divide us by sexual preference. They divide us by anything to avoid talking about the bottom-line issues, which I think are balancing the budget, health care and making sure we have a decent education.

I was horrified. The combination of that and the nomination of Charles Pickering, who was rejected once before because of his racial views, I think, has sent the message to Latino and African-American and immigrant people in this country that 'We want fewer of you in medical schools and law schools and the best colleges of this state.' I cannot imagine anything more destructive that this president could have done.

SMILEY: Governor, you just suggested that the president and the Republican Party of late are sending mixed messages on race. Where do you stand specifically on affirmative action, and what would you do to advance the conversation about race in this country?

Dr. DEAN: First of all, I think you have to talk about race. For the president to use the word 'quotas' is the way the Republicans always talk about race. They appeal to people's worst instincts, and then they run around and pretend that there's nothing really racial about what they're talking about. Let's talk about race. Race is a tough issue in this country. Diversity is critical. We don't have a majority population in California anymore. There's a series of minorities. There's African-Americans, there's Latinos, there's Caucasians--a series of minorities. The whole country is going to be a series of minorities halfway through this century. We have got to get beyond this notion that we're going to subtly appeal to each other's fears about each other and start talking bluntly about why we ought to celebrate each other's differences and the things that each one of us can bring to America, no matter what group that we come from. And the president of the United States--for him to delve back into the 1950s, appealing subtly to white fears, I think, was the greatest disservice in his presidency.

SMILEY: When it comes to gun control, Governor Dean, you don't fall in lockstep or in line with most other Democrats. Tell me why you oppose strict gun-control measures.

Dr. DEAN: I come from a very rural state, Tavis. Our homicide rate was five per year one year; the most we ever had when I was governor was 25. We have no gun control, pretty much, of any kind in Vermont. Now I think that you may need gun control in New York and Los Angeles or Washington, DC, and my attitude is, have as much as you want. But don't tell Vermont and Wyoming that they need gun control. Here's what my position is and what it would be as president. Keep the assault weapons ban. I favor that and it ought to be renewed. Keep the Brady bill, close the gun-show loophole, and then let every state decide for themselves what additional gun control they need.

SMILEY: Let me turn your attention for a moment, Governor, to the notion of foreign policy; the country on the brink of war with Iraq. Do you see a way to avoid war and at the same time ensure that Saddam Hussein doesn't have weapons of mass destruction?

Dr. DEAN: I do, and I think after the president began to listen to Secretary Powell instead of the more conservative members of his administration, things began to go right in Iraq. I think the notion of getting the Security Council to support the disarming of Saddam Hussein was the right notion, and that was a good thing to do. I think that making it clear to Saddam Hussein that inspectors are going to go back in and going to be able to have a free hand and find evidence is the right thing to do. But I prefer a diplomatic solution, and I think we can get to a diplomatic solution.

I think the problem--one of the problems with Iraq is that that is not the biggest threat. The biggest threat is al-Qaeda. Bob Graham, a senator from Florida who I admire greatly, voted no on the Iraq resolution because he did not believe it was addressing the real problem, which was Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Hamas. These are groups that really do threaten America. Saddam Hussein is not at this time a threat to America. The president has never made the case that he's a threat to America, and it's beyond me why we have 250,000 troops over there when we're not paying the kind of attention to security at home and the intelligence agencies and improving those agencies, particularly the FBI, that we ought to be paying.

SMILEY: Are Democrats in Congress showing any independence when it comes to Iraq?

Dr. DEAN: Tavis, here's what bothers me about this whole thing. I'm the only--first of all, I'm the only candidate for president that's a governor that's actually balanced a budget or delivered health care, but I'm also the only candidate for president that's said they would not support the president's Iraq resolution. But if you give somebody a choice between voting for somebody who believes in what they're doing and voting for somebody who appears to be taking positions based on polls and will say what they have to say to win, they're going to choose the person who believes in themselves every single time, and they're going to give you some slack on policy. So what I want to do is run the kind of candidacy that, perhaps, John McCain would have run, which is to talk about issues bluntly and plainly, and have a different policy alternative for the people of this country to vote for.

SMILEY: And yet you see that John McCain is in the Senate and not in the White House.

Dr. DEAN: Yeah, but John McCain had some other problems that didn't have anything to do with whether he won or not. He had some money problems. He was also a senator. He hadn't actually had the opportunity to balance budgets and deliver services, which I have.

SMILEY: How is your money? How's your fund raising?

Dr. DEAN: Well, we just started, really. I just hired a full-time fund-raising director this month, and I guess we'll find out over the next six or eight months or so.

SMILEY: Let me stay with this conversation for a moment here about the Democratic Party, because your comments kind of mirror those of one William Jefferson Clinton who, after the Democrats lost their shirts in the '02 elections, said, as I recall, when speaking to the DLC, the Democratic Leadership Council, that 'It is better to be strong and wrong that weak and right.' I guess the question is, your analysis notwithstanding: Can the Democrats do that? Can the Democrats sell? Do they have anything that they are for, as opposed to being against everything?

Dr. DEAN: Here's what I'll do if I'm president, and you make up your own mind about what the answer to that question is. I want a balanced budget. I want a tax policy that rewards middle-class and working people, not only contributors to the president's campaign. I want health insurance for all Americans in a system that does not change everything and have the government run it; it simply expands the present system to cover everybody, the way we've done in Vermont. I want investment in early childhood. I want a strong defense policy and a strong military, but I want a diplomatic policy that relies on cooperating with other countries instead of confronting them and going it alone at all times. That's my vision for what America should look like.

But most importantly, what my vision is--I want a philosophy of government that says we are responsible for and to each other as a people, that we are working together in this and that we will not pit groups against each other based on our ethnic differences, our racial differences, our religious differences. That's what this president did when he talked about his position on the University of Michigan, when he renominated Charles Pickering. We have got to get away from those racial code words and start building a society where we're all respected for who we are.

SMILEY: Maybe it's too early to ask; I do not know, so I won't ask you about names, per se, but any thoughts of the kind of person, should you become the Democratic nominee, that you'd like to have as a running mate--the kind of person?

Dr. DEAN: It is too early to ask, and, you know, as you said, Tavis, right now I'm at 4 percent, although the top guy's only about 8 points ahead of me, so none of us are--you know, we all have a long way to go. But, you know, to consider choices for vice president before you've gotten pretty close to the nomination is probably a mistake. What I'm definitely going to do is pick somebody who can help negotiate the shoals in Washington. I think the mistake that governors have made in the past when they've gotten to Washington is that they think Washington works the way the state capital does, and it doesn't.

SMILEY: Right.

Dr. DEAN: Governors have a much more dominant role in their state capital than the president does in Washington, and that's something you have to consider.

SMILEY: Howard Dean is seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 2004, and has served as governor of Vermont for three terms.

Governor, thank you for your time and the conversation. I appreciate. All the best to you.

Dr. DEAN: Great to talk to you.

Continue reading/discuss NPR Interview with Tavis Smiley: transcript ...

The good folks over at DeanForAmerica.com have finally added a section for Dean's speeches. Here's a few highlights from Howard's speech in Linn County, Iowa in January:

On the divisiveness that permeates the Republican Party: "I was deeply, deeply disappointed - more so than I have been in a long series of disappointments - with the Bush Administration. The President of the United States went before a national audience last week and, in response to the question of whether the University of Michigan should be allowed to continue the program that they have to make sure that their classes look like America, he used the word "quota" seven times on national television. The University of Michigan does not have a quota system, it never did have a quota system; the word "quota" is designed to foster racial divisiveness and to encourage other people to be fearful that folks are going to take their jobs. It is disgraceful for the President of the United States to ever use that word. If this were an isolated incident, you might say it was a mistake, but it wasn't. Two weeks before that, the Bush Administration renominated Charles Pickering to the United States Court of Appeals after he was turned down by the previous Democratic Senate because of his racial insensitivities. Let us not make a mistake about which party wants inclusiveness and diversity in this country. It is not the Republican Party. If you want a diverse nation, if you want to have an opportunity for Latinos and African Americans and immigrants, then you had better support Democrats, because this country is moving forward; it is going to be the most diverse country on the face of the earth and only the Democrats can build that country the way it needs to be built."

On how the Republican Party isn't fiscally responsible: "The only person who's balanced the budget in the last thirty-five years - no Republican has balanced the budget in the last thirty-five years - is Bill Clinton. Not one Republican president. And it is not an accident - when Bill Clinton balanced the budget in 1993 without one single Republican vote it ushered in the greatest ten years of prosperity in the history of America. George Bush has thrown that away in two single years. From the largest surplus in the history of America to the largest deficit. We can do better. If you want somebody you can trust with your money you had better elect a Democrat because the Republicans cannot manage money."

On cutting taxes and education: "We need to get rid of the Bush tax cuts that have harmed the economy to subsidize health care for small business people, individuals and people who work for corporations that don't give health care. That would help the economy much more than the President's tax cuts that went to people who made more than $300,000 a year. It's not enough for Dick Gephardt and I to say it. I want to see everyone say it as well. Those tax cuts are a mistake and we should stand up and say so. If we were to get rid of the President's tax cut, which is $1.7 trillion dollars, we could afford a small pittance of that - $27 billion - to get rid of the largest unfunded mandate in the history of education. If I am elected president, in my first year's budget special education will be fully funded. Remember, I'm a fiscal conservative; what am I doing with this fat spending program? It is tiny. In a $1.2 trillion budget, two percent of that is spent on education. $27 billion is a small amount of money, but do you know who benefits? Property taxpayers benefit, because if we were to fully fund special education, school boards all across America could decide how to pay teachers more, how to have smaller class size, how to improve their buildings, and still have money left over for a property tax cut. If you want to cut taxes in this country, Mr. President, don't cut income taxes for people who make $300,000 or more; what about us middle class property tax payers who are suffering because you can't fund education because you've run up the biggest deficit in the history of the country? We can do better!"

Now go read the rest of the speech!

Continue reading/discuss Text of the "We Can Do Better!" Speech from Linn County, Iowa ...

Howard Dean gets a glowing profile on New York Metro.com. The writer, Meryl Gordon, focuses much of her attention of Dean as a person and, in doing so, puts his political stances into a personal context.

For better or worse, presidential candidates are judged on their family backgrounds and they way they’ve lived their lives before they jumped into the race. They are required to be both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. They have to be simultaneously Patrician and “just folks”—those of you who remember the Al Gore “he went to St. Alban’s and lived in a hotel” meme from 2000 know what I’m talking about here.

What we are shown of Dean’s life in this article bodes well for his ability to run as an above average, average guy. The son of Park Avenue blue-bloods, he’s not going to be able to run on a “rags to riches story.” However, there’s an appeal to a person who walked away from “a Park Avenue apartment serenely decorated with small African sculptures and modernist paintings and prints” to “a much-lived-in house, with an Oriental rug, a white couch and wing chair that need reupholstering, a chess set, and framed pictures on every flat surface.”

Is any of this as important as his stands on foreign policy or domestic issue? No, but it will be treated as such by the wags of the media. It’s better to be prepared, and this article is a good start in introducing the country to the private side of a compelling candidate.

(Thanks to Jason Rothstein for the catch!)

Continue reading/discuss The Unlikely Rise of Howard Dean ...

Given that Martin Sheen aka President Bartlett has endorsed Dean, I wonder if perhaps the actor could be persuaded to lobby NBC to give Dean some exposure on the show. It could be as minor as a West Wing staffer wearing a Howard Dean t-shirt, or it could be as major as having Dean himself make a cameo appearance.

Could we, the DeanBlog collective, mount a campaign to get Dean on the West Wing? Use the comment thread to chime in - if anyone can find out email addresses for the show or for Sheen that would be a great start.

Continue reading/discuss Dean on The West Wing? ...

The Washington Post has a profile of Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D), who is apparently "exploring" a presidential bid. Kucinich is strongly anti-war, and the conventional wisdom seems to be that this represents a threat to Dean. The TNR blog as usual takes a hard line, calling Kucinich "Howard Dean's worst nightmare" :

The real loser in all of this has to be Howard Dean. As the Post also points out, Kucinich will be making the very same anti-Iraq case to Iowa activists that Dean has been making for months--only without Dean's tortured qualification about supporting war if there were convincing evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, or whatever Dean is saying these days. And Kucinich also steps on Dean's unconventional-liberal schtick. Dean supporters spend a lot of time playing up their man's fiscal conservatism and his opposition to gun control. Kucinich, it turns out, opposes abortion and has voted for a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning. The more you think about it, the more it seems like Dennis Kucinich leaves Howard Dean without a constituency.

The TNR blog's implacable hostility to Dean blinds them to the obvious counter-argument - Dean is still running as a progressive. Unconventional on certain issues of principle, but ultimately a progressive. Kucinich's abortion stance waffling and his flag-burning voting record are serious black marks against women's rights and free speech. How can he be taken seriously?

The only issue on which Kucinich is any kind of challenge is the war, and frankly I don't think that a single-issue candidate can survive, and while Kucinich has received some media attention, he is too one-dimensional to represent a real threat, unless annointed by the media.

Continue reading/discuss Is Kucinich a threat? ...

Dr. Dean gave a major speech today in Iowa today on Foreign Policy. The speech is now up on the website. The WA Post had an early copy of the speech in their papers this morning, Dean Speech to Critique Plans for War on Iraq.

Here is Dean's schedule for the coming week, for any of you that want to get out there and give us notes:

Mon. 2/17 – Dean makes speech at Drake University in Des Moines; attends Iowa Federation of Labor meeting in Warren County; attends Warren County off-year caucus.

Tues. 2/18 – Dean campaigns in Silicon Valley, Calif.

Wed. 2/19 – Dean speaks to ITUP, a group fighting for improved insurance in Sacramento at convention center; Campaigns with Sen. Barbara Boxer, doing fundraising for her.

Thurs. 2/20 – Dean in Los Angeles.

Fri. 2/21 – Democratic National Committee's winter meeting in Washington. Dean speaks in the morning.

Fri. 2/21 – Dean speaks to College Democrats at Hyatt Regency in Washington.

Sat. 2/22 – Dean speaks at Human Rights Campaign dinner in Los Angeles.

Sun. 2/23 – Dean meets with Democrats Abroad in Washington.

Continue reading/discuss "Defending American Values - Protecting America's Interests" ...

From AP writer Christopher Graff:

SHELBURNE, Vt. - In the nearly dozen years that Howard Dean served as governor of Vermont, Judy Dean was all but invisible. No speeches. No interviews. No campaigning.

That's changing now that her husband is in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but there are still limits.


Dr. Judy Dean this month gave her first extensive interview, talking about her husband, her family and her career. But she said still has no plans to join her husband on the campaign trail, and even if he is elected, she plans to continue practicing medicine.


"Some of the public may be disappointed in that, some of the public may say that's terrific," she told The Associated Press. "In this day and age there are a lot of two career families."


Gov. Dean, also a doctor, supports her decision.


"If I win, Judy will practice medicine in Washington," he said. "That doesn't mean she will never go to a state dinner, but I don't see her job as entertainer.


"When she married me, she didn't know I was going to run for president of the United States. I didn't either."

I've got some news for both of them: As the campaign heats up and the election draws nearer, Dr. Judy will indeed have to put in a LOT of appearances and she will be subject to the same intense scrutiny that all candidate's wives have.

And if Dean were to win the election, Judy might be able to practice medicine part-time but she will be expected -- indeed required -- to be at his side for the numerous presidential functions that occur every week including dinners, funerals, entertaining heads of states, etc.

Still, it would be nice to have a First Lady who actually does something besides being a prop. And it would certainly be an inspiration to the millions of women in America who have to or want to have a career.

Quick note: My thanks to Aziz for inviting me to join the team here at Dean 2004. He knows I have mixed emotions about Dean but invited me anyway. I promise NOT to rant here -- I save that for my own blog, Alphecca. This is my first experience with Blogger so I hope this posts correctly...

Continue reading/discuss Dean's wife Judy to remain invisible? ...

Brendan of the New York for Dean group writes:

Wanted to forward the flyer we just made for the national rallies on Saturday. Feel free to let people have this if you wish.

Its a double sided flyer (2 half page fronts and 2 half page backs).
We're going to be handing them out this weekend and I wanted to share the wealth with other groups that may want to use it.

Click to download the flyer in PDF format.

Continue reading/discuss Dean flyer available courtesy of New York for Dean group ...

From PoliticsNH, is a report that Dean has hired experienced organizer Karen Hicks to run his campaign in New Hampshire:

PoliticsNH.com has learned former Vermont Governor Howard Dean has hired experienced organizer Karen Hicks to run his campaign in New Hampshire. Dean will be attending a house party on Sunday. The event will be at the home of Gary and Meg Hirshberg in Concord from 4:30-6pm

Anyone in NH who can attend the event this Sunday and send us pictures?

This will be a busy weekend in NH, with candidates Edwards, Gephardt, and Dean visiting the state, as well as potential candidates Carol Moseley-Braun and Wesley Clark.

Meanwhile, a poll of likely NH primary voters last week by University of Connecticut Center for Survey Research and Analysis showed the following results:

John Kerry - 32%
Joe Lieberman - 18%
Howard Dean - 12%
Dick Gephardt - 7%
Jon Edwards - 3%
Al Sharpton - 2%

The poll also shows Kerry and Lieberman with name recognition and favorability ratings light years ahead of the other candidates. When asked which candidate has the best chance of winning, 43 percent said Kerry followed by 16 percent for Lieberman. When asked who had the best chance of beating President Bush - again Kerry wins with 32 percent followed by Lieberman with 13 percent.

Its clear that Dean is a better challenge to Bush by simply looking at his position on the issues. Therefore, the fact that more primary voters in NH think Kerry and Lieberman are better positioned to beat Bush is more a function of Dean's lack of exposure. Hopefully as we get nearer to the primaries these dynamics will shift.

Continue reading/discuss New Hampshire busy weekend ...

While Dean's commuter train may have lost money, he still left Vermont in better financial shape than most states. At the Eastern Regional Conference of the Council for State Governments, legislators from Vermont spoke about their state's fiscal situation.

“As bad as this is, it could be a lot worse had we not been fiscally conservative in the past few years,” House Speaker Walter Freed, R-Dorset, said Tuesday. “I want to attribute it to our own fiscal conservatism over the last two years. … It’s important that people in the state who hear this message realize we’re here because we’ve been fiscally conservative in the past few years. Everyone’s had a piece in this.”
One of those policies was to use surpluses in flush years for onetime expenditures rather than for additional programs, said Rep. Martha Heath, D-Westford, vice chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee. “I think you can give (former Gov.) Howard Dean and the Legislature the credit,” she said. “We learned valuable lessons from the early 1990s. We established rainy-day funds and we’ve been vigilant about filling them and keeping them filled.”

Certainly doesn't sound like fodder for "Fleecing of America", does it?
*thanks to reader Christopher Curtis for the link*

Continue reading/discuss Vermont economy "better than most" states ...

Dean knows that it is almost impossible to defeat a Senator JFK (D) in Massachusetts. Pragmatically, he figures second-place is just fine:

BOSTON -- A second-place finish in Massachusetts wouldn't bother former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.

In fact, when Dean's fledgling presidential campaign rolled into Boston yesterday, the Democrat said he has no designs on beating U.S. Sen. John Kerry on his home turf.

"Massachusetts is an important state," Dean said. "Obviously Senator Kerry is going to win his home state, but we're going to campaign in all 50 states, and this is one of them."

Dean visited the State House yesterday to meet with supporters. He also made a surprise appearance at a rally organized by advocates for early-childhood education.

"We're raising money in Massachusetts and we're doing a lot of work on issues," Dean said, adding, "I'm here both to learn from the activist community and also to talk about what we've done (in Vermont)."

A handful of Massachusetts lawmakers -- including Rep. Jay Kaufman, D-Lexington -- already have lined up behind Dean.
...
Dean's supporters include former Democratic National Committee chairman Steve Grossman, a Newton resident who ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor last year.

Grossman is helping Dean raise money in Massachusetts and beyond. Dean said he plans to return to Massachusetts in March for a major fund-raiser. Although Kerry can bank on widespread support among Massachusetts' elected officials, some lawmakers are reserving judgment.

Unless there is a brokered convention, however, it's not clear how "second place" would actually help Dean in his bid for the nomination. Should he bother to campaign there? Or spend his resources elsewhere?

Continue reading/discuss Dean courts Boston: Presidential hopeful accepts runner-up role in Bay State ...

Not exactly good news. Then-Governor Dean had championed the Champlain Flyer, a commuter train running between Burlington and Charlotte. However, the train never met ridership expectations and has been losing money, and Dean's successor Gov. James Douglas plans to cancel it. To add salt to the wound, the train will be featured again on NBC Nightly News a part of the "Fleecing of America" segment, which is dedicated to wasteful government spending:

MONTPELIER — The Champlain Flyer, a money-losing commuter train recently canceled by Gov. James Douglas, will make its third — and likely final — appearance on a national news program dedicated to government boondoggles.

Crews from NBC Nightly News were in Montpelier Tuesday to film a story on the Flyer for the program’s “Fleecing of America” segment, which is devoted to exposing wasteful government spending programs.

The commuter train between Burlington and Charlotte — championed by then-Gov. Howard Dean — made its initial appearance on the show in 1998, two years before it even began regular operation.

Now Douglas has proposed ending the train’s run in March, and NBC plans to air a segment next Thursday documenting the move.

“They’ve been here a day or so, they rode the train yesterday to experience it themselves,” Douglas said. “I said (to them) what I said the other day, that ridership did not meet expectations, that revenue has been insufficient, and it’s been operating at a loss. I like trains, but when we’re facing such tight revenue times it’s just not a priority.”
...
Even the most charitable analysis by the Joint Fiscal Committee put the projected capital cost of the project at nearly $4 million, while the actual expenses were almost $15 million. And the projected annual operating cost of about $1 million turned out to be closer to $2.6 million.

Ridership was projected at 214,562 passenger trips annually and was expected to generate more than $160,000 in revenue. Instead, the train has managed about 83,000 riders annually and taken in about $53,000 in the last year.
...
Attempts to reach Dean for comment were unsuccessful, but Rep. John Tracy, D-Burlington, said he was “very disappointed that our commitment to public transit and to rail is taking a hit under this administration.”

He blamed many of the train’s opponents, who pushed for restrictions on the use of the train’s horn at crossings — necessitating costly gates — with driving up the project’s cost, and said that taxpayers heavily subsidize the airline industry and the highway system, yet balk when the subject of rail subsidies come up.

Given that Dean runs as a budget-balancing fiscal conservative, this issue is perfect fodder for attack. It is almost certain that there are other failures in the closet (after all, being Governor for 6 terms, you are bound to have some slipups). Dean's emphasis on his executive record (rather than the legislative backgrounds of all his opponents) is especially vulnerable to this kind of thing.

(courtesy Lawrence)

UPDATE: edited a typo, to read "6 terms" instead of "6 years". Thanks to DaveB for pointing out the error.

Continue reading/discuss Dean's "Champlain Flyer" to appear on TV's "Fleecing of America" ...

The single best way to support Howard Dean is to contribute money to the campaign. As I have mentioned before, if you are on a fixed budget and have to choose between buying a bumper sticker or sending three bucks to Dean's campaign, donate the money.

That said, Dean merchandise does play an important role in promoting the candidate, by increasing name recognition and ultimately helping to attract more supporters (and hence the pool of people who donate!). Dean bumper stickers are especially effective, because they are the most highly visible, and several Meetup organizers have been buying them to hand out at meetings. There are a number of other products in the Dean Store including postcards, t-shirts, and other gear. We are working to get mini-posters also made that can be displayed in public areas and mounted as signs. Imagine how cool it would be if Dean were to attend an event and see all the attendees wearing Dean hats and waving Dean signs :) Given that the campaign is strapped for funds, we are basically able to act as a distributed and free marketing campaign.


CafePress has announced that in honor of President's Day, any order on CafePress.com between 2/17 and 2/28 that is $40 or more, is eligible for a $5 discount, by using the coupon code PREZDAY^[1]. This seems singularly appropriate for Dean :)

Note that there are two bumper sticker styles - one with the URL for the campaign, and the other more plain (click the thumbnails above). Check out the Dean Store (and annex) for other products. If anyone has ideas on designs or products, please send me email or leave a comment.

UPDATE: David in the comments section writes, "My understanding is that credit card donations under $10 actually cost the campaign more than they are worth.
So if you're going to donate those 3 dollars, send a check."

^[1] Note that you don't need to only shop in the Dean Store to qualify - the $40 can be spent across multiple Cafe Press stores.

Continue reading/discuss President's Day promotion for Dean gear ...

via The Daily Kos, comes this news story about the rising tide of anti-war sentiment among Iowans. Given that Dean is the only candidate who has not kissed Bush's rubber stamp, this gives him a marked advantage in that critical state for the primary run:

Harkin was the warm-up act for the Democratic presidential candidate who is best positioned to ride the groundswell of dovish sentiment into next January's Iowa caucuses. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean earned the most enthusiastic standing ovation of the evening when he said: ''We ought not to resort to unilateral action unless there is an imminent threat to the United States. And the secretary of State and the president have not made a case that such an imminent threat exists.''

It wasn't too long ago that Dean was the Rodney Dangerfield of the Democratic race, the long-shot candidate from a minuscule state who didn't get much respect. But all that is changing fast, largely because of Democratic doubts about war. As Iowa party Chairman Gordon Fischer, who is neutral in the presidential race, put it Monday: ''I can see Dean winning the Iowa caucuses. He's as much a player here as anybody.''

Good strategic advice for Dean would be to publicize the essentially media-ignored story about the bi-partisan bill to repeal the Iraq Use of Force Resolution. There was one small mention in the AP newswire, but none in teh major outlets. Blogger Lisa English has a detailed post on the issue as well as links for advocacy.

It's virtually certain that Lieberman, Edwards, and Kerry will not support any such repeal. This makes them especially weak in Iowa, if Dean can leverage it and get people's attention.

Continue reading/discuss Anti-war sentiment in Iowa is good for Dean ...

Via the Bitter Shack comes a link regarding the wealth of the current presidential contenders. Visit the link above to take a look at Dean's numbers. Here's his sources of wealth in a nutshell:

Salomon, Smith Barney Cash and Money Account ($910,000 - $910,000 )
US Treasury Bonds ($441,000 - $441,000 )
T. Rowe Price Cash Reserves ($316,000 - $316,000 )
560 Acres of undeveloped land in Lowell, VT ($300,000 - $300,000 )
Vermont GO and Agency ($250,000 - $250,000 )

Asset breakdown:
Cash, Savings $1,441,000 - $1,441,000
Stocks or Bonds $1,045,000 - $1,045,000
Real Estate $550,000 - $550,000
Other $390,000 - $390,000
General Investment $366,500 - $366,500

Feel free to peruse the site and check out the other contenders.

Continue reading/discuss Governor Dean's personal wealth ...

By RON FOURNIER and LAURAN NEERGAARD
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry will have his prostate removed Wednesday after being diagnosed with "a very early, curable" form of cancer, his doctor said.
Dr. Patrick Walsh, a urologist at The Johns Hopkins Hospital who pioneered the safest form of prostate removal, said the Massachusetts senator should be back at work in a couple of weeks following the surgery.
Kerry, 59, who is otherwise fit, has a 95 percent rate of being cured, Walsh said, citing his own newly published study of 2,000 patients who have undergone surgery.
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who was elected to the Senate in 1984, scheduled a 5 p.m. EST news conference at a Senate committee room to announce his diagnosis. Aides said the surgery will not effect his presidential campaign.
Kerry, whose father died of prostate cancer while he was in his 80s, was diagnosed at a fairly young age. Walsh said that helps his chances of recovery.
"Every expectation is that this is a simple procedure and that John will be back at full speed within days," said Chris Lehane, a spokesman for Kerry.
About 220,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, and 28,900 will die, the American Cancer Society estimates. It is the second-leading cancer killer of men. But caught early, it is highly curable.
Surgery is the most common treatment for prostate cancer that has not yet spread beyond the doughnut-shaped gland that surrounds the urethra.
Men over 50 are routinely screened routinely for prostate abnormalities with a blood test for the prostate specific antigen, or PSA.

Continue reading/discuss Sen. Kerry to Undergo Surgery for Cancer ...

In the NYT's, An Antiwar Democrat Leaves Room to Wiggle, By ADAM NAGOURNEY, Dr. Dean is used. In Iowa's DM Register, Candidate Dean rips rivals' stances on war with Iraq, By THOMAS BEAUMONT, Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is used. So, which one? Given the choice, the Dr. title is probably more of a maverick asset for Dean than being a former Governor. There's something about having the 'former' there that is relates Dean to the past, instead of the future. The 'Dr. Dean' title also gives emphasis upon his signature issue, health-care.

UPDATE (by Aziz, via Lawrence): It seems that Dean has let his medical license expire:

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) Former Gov. Howard Dean has let his license to practice medicine in Vermont expire.

But Dean, who is a physician and a candidate for president, said it was an oversight caused by his busy schedule. He plans to pay the $25 penalty for a late renewal.

Dean's license lapsed Nov. 30. The regular renewal cost is $350, said John Howland Jr., interim director of the state Medical Practice Board.

Hundreds of nonpracticing doctors are similarly tardy in filing for renewal, Howland said. If Dean were practicing medicine, the lapsed license would be a much bigger deal.

''I find it quite unremarkable that he would not be renewing his medical license,'' Howland said. ''He's busy doing other things.''

Dean said his busy schedule contributed to his not renewing his license.

Dean told Modern Physician magazine that he wasn't in Montpelier last fall to receive the renewal application.

''I wasn't there much in November and December, so I never saw it,'' Dean told the Chicago-based magazine, which first reported the story on its Web site Wednesday. ''It will be taken care of, but I do have to pay a $25 fine.''

In light of this, I think emphasising the "Dr." when referring to Dean is going to be an easy opening for critics. The best strategy for Dean is not to insist on any title whatsoever, and let individual journalists decide on their own.

Continue reading/discuss Dr. Dean, or Former VT Governor Dean ...

Courtesy of Democracy in Action, here is a link to the transcript of Dean's remarks to the Conference of Mayors. Lots of emphasis on economic issues, of course, and unfunded mandates. Much is a repeat of the content from the NPR speech, but still, Dean stays on message. Excerpt:

I'm a fiscal conservative, a real fiscal conservative--I'm not a borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend Republican who gives tax cuts by raiding Social Security and gives all the money to people who make more than a million dollars a year.

No, what we did was--I've also been governor long enough so I had the pleasure of serving through two recessions, not one [laughter]. And after we got through the first one in 1990, we began to set aside money to pay off nearly a quarter of all our debt in the last decade. I never let the legislature spend too much more than the rate of growth and we invested in infrastructure, we invested in cities; we put all our state buildings in down towns and as a result--we have a terrible revenue problem in our state just like everybody else--but we're adding money to Medicaid, we're adding money to higher education, we're adding money to K-12 education, maybe it's not as much as we'd like.

Continue reading/discuss Transcript: address to the National Conference of Democratic Mayors ...

The Meetup service is brilliant. There are present almost 900 people signed up for Dean Meetups - almost three times as many for Kerry and four times as many for Edwards. Check out the HQ and you can see photos from the meetups in DC and Minneapolis - and if any participants in other meetups have photos, you are encouraged to post them to the HQ. One thing that strikes me about the photos is the sheer diversity - not just race, but age as well.

Continue reading/discuss Photos from Dean Meetups ...