Howard Dean's Candidacy Reeling from Racial Remark

I just think you two guys get shrill every day over nothing.

Haven't you ever been paying attention before during a long presidential race? It's like the tour de france - a long arduous journey. Getting excited about who gets a blister in mile 25 is hardly a matter of concern.

The nominee with probably be either Dean or Kerry, and whatever they say now is of little moment. In presidential primaries for the opposition party, the key at this point is staying in the game, not running out of support or money. Next comes showing well in New Hampshire and Iowa.

I don't know if Dean gets the nomination, but his conflict with Joe Lieberman is good for him. In fact, ANYTHING that gets these guys on TV right now probably helps them. They need name ID and visibility, and fighting gets that.

At this point in 1991, an equally inglorious governor from an equally insignificant state was not doing any better, and he was also working to run against a popular incumbent named BUSH.

Bush will either be vulnerable or he won't. If he is, the Dem nominee will have a good chance. If he isn't, the Dem nominee won't.

 

FF, I found it interesting that the analysts on PBS news grilled Dean tonight, and called Lieberman the "big winner" in the debates.

 

today's news

media love a fight, any fight

Lieberman has a plan, and that plan is to call Dean out. His purpose is to woo the non-Dean voters who aren't strongly for Gephardt, Kerry, Edwards or Graham. It was clear to me in his TV interviews today that this was part of his new campaign strategy.

the big WINNER for the night was Al Sharpton. Do you really think Dean is drawing any support in the Jewish community, anyway? That's Lieberman's core, and he doesn't have much besides that.

Joe Leiberman is too boring to be president. OMG, that is most boring man on the face of the planet. How he ever got elected to anything I'll never know. When Dick Cheney hands you your azz on TV, you know you suck.

 

I find great humor in this, given who I current president is.

 

No Worries, you can criticize G.W. for his linguistic shortcomings, but he is not a loose cannon.

G.W. sticks to the script, and rarely attacks his adversaries. He stays on topic, and stays positive.

Dean is exactly the opposite. He is an attack dog who thrives on the negative. In my view, his goose is cooked, because his fellow Democrats won't forget how he lied about them.

 

you were watching 4 years ago when Bush used every dirty trick in the book to beat McCain, weren't you?

 

I am not talking about political strategy (aka dirty tricks).

The master of that is Al Gore. Al could attack his opponent unfairly, and leave the debate looking like a choirboy.

When Dean attacks, he is like a bull in a china shop.

 

I would *welcome* Howie Dean getting the democratic nomination. The guy would simply have no chance in today's centrist political environment.

Dean on the ticket = FOUR MORE YEARS FOR W

 

If anyone thinks the current administration represents a "centrist political environment," they've been polishing their Dubya dolls too long.

 

The problem is that there seems to be an abundance of poor decision making in Vermont.

I think Dean is an affable fellow and probably a good man, but the governmental principles that are in use in Vermont likely would be disasterous when applied to a much larger population (for instance, the entire country).

For the record, I think that T_J's thread title is misleading at best.

 

Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

 

here's what Will Saletan has to say on the second debate

Scoring the second debate
A field goal for John Kerry, a touchdown for Howard Dean
By William Saletan
SLATE.COM
BALTIMORE, Sept. 10 — Just about everybody did well in this debate, much better than in last week’s debate in Albuquerque, N.M. Joe Lieberman was fiery (he even drowned out a heckler), Dennis Kucinich sounded almost sane, and John Edwards finally talked and laughed like one of those regular people he keeps claiming to represent. But the most important performances were turned in by John Kerry and Howard Dean.

KERRY WAS AS lively as Kerry gets. He’ll never convince viewers like me, who find him stiff and absurdly formal, that he isn’t stiff and absurdly formal. But that problem is superficial, and we can get over it. Kerry’s more fundamental problem is his tendency to try to have everything both ways, chiefly by rigging his answers with caveats. He approaches political questions the way soldiers approach urban warfare: He never walks into a sentence without leaving himself a way out.
Last night, however, Kerry took a holiday from his inner political consultant. He said what he thought. To a question about sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, he replied, “No, we do not need or want more American troops to do that.” To a question about approving Bush’s request for $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, Kerry said that if Bush didn’t answer certain

[continued at Slate.com or msnbc.com]

 

Trader Jorge starts up this thread, major publications throw Dean out there as if he's the frontrunner. I know how badly you want to build up Dean and then tear him down, but he won't be the nominee anyway.

 

Here's why Jorge started the thread.
********************

Republican Party officials and political advisers to President Bush admit that they underestimated Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean and say they now consider him a formidable potential adversary.

Some Bush allies say he reminds them of another insurgent candidate who once bedeviled Bush: Arizona Sen. John McCain. His wins in Republican primary elections in New Hampshire and Michigan rattled Bush's 2000 campaign.

"There is something going on there, and I tell you, if we don't pay attention ... we're making a big mistake," says Tom Rath, a Republican strategist and Bush adviser in New Hampshire.

Dean leads in polls for New Hampshire's primary election Jan. 27, the first step in the nominating process. (A Boston Globe poll released Sunday shows Dean with a 12 percentage-point lead over Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in New Hampshire.)

Other Republicans say Dean will fade. Interviews with 15 GOP leaders found consensus on one point: If Dean wins the first two contests, Iowa's caucuses Jan. 19 and New Hampshire's primary, he'll win the nomination.

Two months ago, Karl Rove, Bush's top political aide, watched Dean supporters marching in a parade July 4 in Washington and said to a friend, "That's the one we want." Exhorting fellow parade watchers, Rove yelled, "Come on, everybody! Go, Howard Dean!"

The thinking then was that the former Vermont governor was too liberal and too obscure to be a threat. Bush allies were more worried about Kerry, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt.

Few Republicans are cheering for Dean now. His fundraising — he collected $7.6 million in the second quarter of the year, outdoing his eight rivals — the appeal of his passionate attacks on Bush and his rise in the polls have revised their earlier opinions.

Republicans were surprised by Dean's success at using the Internet to organize supporters and raise money and his ability to galvanize the Bush-haters who are most likely to vote in Democratic primaries. They say Dean seems to be the only candidate having fun on the campaign trail, a quality that voters find appealing.

No top Republican Party, White House or Bush campaign official wanted to be identified talking about Dean, but he's as hot a topic inside the Bush camp as he is among his Democratic rivals.

How worried is the Bush team? One campaign official notes that Dean is renting lots of cars in Iowa — evidence that Bush supporters in the state are keeping an eye on him and his campaign spending.

"He has a huge opportunity to take the nomination," says Bill Dal Col, who managed Steve Forbes' 2000 presidential campaign. "Nobody anticipated this kind of energy behind his candidacy."

Dean is "obviously the odds-on favorite," says Geoffrey Becker, executive director of the Florida Republican Party.

Still, some Republicans say Dean's status will erode. His ascendance will result in closer scrutiny of his record in Vermont, they say. His sometimes prickly personality could work against him. They're waiting to see how he reacts to adversity, such as a surprise loss or attacks from his peers. Republicans also expect — or hope — that Dean's popularity will dip as he becomes the target of his eight rivals for the Democratic nomination.

Other Republicans say Dean looks like a hot candidate because the rest of the Democratic candidates are too weak to dominate the race. "In part, his success is an indictment of the rest of the field," says Scott Reed, a strategist who managed Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996.

And some Republicans still adhere to the early thinking on Dean: He's too liberal to win a general election and could repeat the fate of George McGovern in his 1972 presidential campaign against incumbent Richard Nixon.

McGovern won the nomination by making his opposition to the Vietnam War the rationale for his campaign. His stance was backed by core Democratic voters but was rejected in the fall election. Nixon won in a landslide.

Ken Khachigian, a California Republican strategist who worked for Nixon, says a replay of that race is possible if Dean is the Democratic nominee. "As one of the few remaining veterans of the '72 Nixon-McGovern campaign, my sense is bring him on," he says.

"McGovern had that same anger and passion to stir up the troops, and at the end of the day, it came back to bite him," Khachigian says.

Republicans say there could be a backlash against Dean among Democratic voters and the party hierarchy if they become convinced his message turns off mainstream voters.

"He clearly is leading the pack among the Democrats because he's the most articulate person leading the charge of pessimism and protest," says state Sen. Chuck Larson, chairman of the Iowa GOP. "But he's dragging the entire party to the left, away from the mainstream. ... He is very out of step."
url

 

LOL

Kids these days...(shakes head)