Reply #271: Dean had plenty big help "not making it out of the primaries" [View All]

[Quill Pen]

...and that help came from his own party leadership, a sloppy and unscrupulous press, and the Kerry campaign. If Howard Dean had not been sabotaged by his own party at the peak of his success, he might have beaten Bush.

But let's not reopen old wounds. The past has passed. Let's talk about the future.

Your post fails to consider that we're not talking about the here and now, but the here and then. America may change after four more years of a crusading, power-intoxicated Inquisitionist zealot; it's possible that the red-state rubes will be beaten down and ready for change by 2008. A couple more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, perhaps; a double-digit unemployment rate; the deficit breaking through several new ceilings past which the Treasury swore it wouldn't loan the government any more money; the draft funneling our young people into various Third World rockpiles...and you know, I think Americans may be ready to rumble.

Personally, I'd rather run household-name Hillary, and have Dean take a cabinet appointment as Sec. of Health and Human Services. But if Dean ran again, I'd be behind him 100%, as I was during the primaries.

Edwards got savaged in the primaries, too, and he's not only the positive, big-hearted, church-goin' Southerner you seem to favor, but if he got any more telegenic, I'd have had to take a cold shower during the VP debate. So where is this magic Southern/Plains prez candidate of yours, if it couldn't be Edwards? Zell Miller, maybe? Tom "I actually voted more like Bush, really" Daschle? Should we see what Ann Richards is up to these days?

The whole point of Dean's new org, Democracy for America, is that the Democratic party needs to evolve. The party needs to stop advancing candidates who stand for nothing except keeping their chairs warm. Obviously, their formula of advancing weak and compliant moderates ain't working. So I'm not really sure who you have in mind, but if it's just another "seasoned politician" who knows how to grab his ankles in greeting to his Republican colleagues, we've been there, done that, and failed to get the T-shirt.