Happy 70th birthday to an amazing Democrat who changed history for the better

[DFW]

56. It would have been quite a campaign to watch

They would have had a hard time Swiftboating Howard. Howard never got to the point where he was considering VP candidates. That would have mattered a lot more with Howard than it did with Kerry. For all their yelling and finger-pointing, I think the Republicans were terrified of a Dean candidacy, as they saw how Howard inspired young people like no one since Bobby Kennedy. All Howard would have had to do to outperform Kerry would have been to carry Ohio so convincingly that Ken Blackwell's election fraud machine couldn't have overturned it.

I'm sure the first half year of a Dean presidency would have been chaotic. Howard himself was the first to say that his campaign had no idea what they were doing, just riding a wave of enthusiasm. However, as witnessed by his DNC chairmanship, Howard was/is able to master big, new, complicated challenges with competency and dedication. I'll tell you one thing, I would have been making regular visits to the White House MANY years before I eventually did (that has now come to an end, obviously), and if Howard had asked me to be Ambassador to Germany, I would have done it.