message from Dean: will endorse Kerry on thursday

By Aziz P. -
Dean posted to the oblog yesterday afternoon:

I don't want to give any of you a heart attack, but I plan to formally endorse John Kerry on Thursday, along with all 34 Congress people who endorsed me during the campaign.

One of the goals of the campaign was to send George Bush back to Texas, and the only person with a chance of doing that is John Kerry. I have spoken with him on numerous occasions. He is committed to universal health care, he has an excellent environmental record, and for that and many other reasons, he is a far better choice for president than the current resident of the White House who apparently (as revealed on Sixty Minutes over the weekend) ignored warnings of the potential of a terrorist attack before 9/11 in addition to costing us 2.3 million jobs!

In any case, I encourage you to support Sen. Kerry, but if you are not ready to do so, I hope you'll put lots of energy into the other two goals: reforming the Democratic Party to nurture its recent backbone transplant, and making the grassroots stronger to get progressive voices on every school board, county commission, City Council, etc. in the country. Many thanks for all you do!!


There's some good-natured teasing in there for us :) Of course, the primary focus for the Gov will be his new organization. The focus does remain on reforming the Democratic party from within, which though I am an independent voter still strikes me as a better solution than trying to reform the GOP or creating a viable 3rd party at a national level. However, the principles outlined by Dean on what kind of representation we need at the local and state level are independent of party ideology.

Here's the main question. Suppose that a principled, honest, moderate Republican is running for office against a progressive, but compromised, Democratic incumbent, Should DFA support the Democrat or the Republican, and why?

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