Nation-Building >> my big fat mea culpa | return to front page

A nice short piece in Salon that shows how the author, still undecided on Dean, has pledged to never call Dean unelectable again, aftfer attending a Meetup. Great reading!

Two weeks ago I whacked the Democratic Leadership Council for bashing Dean as too "far left" to beat George Bush. But I took a shot at Dean, too, saying I thought Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry was more electable. As usual, whenever you diminish Dean (or say something nice about another Democrat, especially Kerry), I got spammed by Dean's vast army of netizens. Some were nasty, most were nice. Several invited me to Dean Meetups in their town, so I could see firsthand the way the good doctor was resuscitating democracy. The Meetups are just one component of Dean's famous Internet strategy: Using the for-profit Meetup.com, which helps anyone who registers (Bill O'Reilly fans, cat lovers, Wiccans) locate like-minded local folks and find a place to get together, Dean supporters have put together thousands of these combination house parties and town-hall meetings over the last eight months and registered more than 80,000 people. I became one of them: I registered, I found a local Dean Meetup; I RSVP'd.

(you'll need to sit through a short commercial to read the rest - it's worth it). But I think the most important point here is that the attacks on Dean are doing the real damage, not Dean's candidacy:

With Bush's approval rating at its lowest level ever -- down 20 points from just after the first phase of the Iraq war -- it strikes me as crazier than ever that some Democrats are trying to do Karl Rove's work for him, and dismiss the Dean surge as the angry squawking of the party's loud but tiny throwback base.