Dean Campaign Continues To Lie About Other Candidates On Race

[DrFunkenstein]

Boston Globe - Democratic candidates running for president pounced Wednesday on front-runner Howard Dean's assertion that he is the only one talking about racial issues before white audiences, calling the comments Dean made at a candidate's forum Tuesday night divisive and false.

<>

"Governor Dean is trying to use positioning on race as a means of defining himself against his Democratic colleagues," said Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. Race "shouldn't be used as a political football," she said.

"Howard Dean's statement was false and inflammatory," Kerry spokeswoman Kelley Benander said. "John Kerry has been speaking out bluntly in front of all audiences on issues of race relations and discrimination since he became a public figure more than 30 years ago."

Dean's spokeswoman, Tricia Enright, dismissed the criticism. "This is not about whether any of the other candidates are committed to the issue of civil rights," she said. "What Governor Dean is talking about is not just the need for civil rights. He is out there talking about how when the president uses the word quota, it is a race-loaded word designed to instill fear of African-Americans and other minorities."

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/6744684.htm

Why would she say this? Why not just apologize? It took me about two seconds to Google this up:

Sen. John Kerry -- the Massachusetts Democrat considered a frontrunner in the race for his party's nod -- said the ruling was a win for everyone, "despite efforts by the Bush administration to inject language like 'quotas' into this debate and roll back civil rights protections."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,90195,00.html

[blm]

1. Because THAT is what they do. They coopt every issue of the left

as their exclusive domain. I think he goes overboard because his own record is so flimsy and RECENT that he is overly aggressive. He is playing at catch up and putting the others down to glorify himself.

[LuminousX]

2. I'm convinced.

They all suck. I'm not going to vote in the primary and will hold my nose and vote for whichever of these inept idiots get voted by you people.

[DrFunkenstein]

3. Is Your Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full?

:hi:

[LuminousX]

4. Half Empty, of course.

I'm a realist.

[renie408]

13. And a lot of fun at parties, too, I bet

[LuminousX]

20. Nope.

I'm the proverbial stick in the mud. The moment my friends start debating which NFL team is the better one is the moment I tell them they are all full of shite, that it doesn't matter because it is fundamentally the same corporation and we want the same thing out of it - good games to watch.

Similarly, all of these cadidates suck. Face it, none of them are worth our time or effort but we desperately want to get rid of Bush. Any of these clowns is better than Bush, and let's face it, they aren't becoming dictators. They won't get to implement their plan of action without the help of the Congress. So bah! on all of this hate-rhetoric.

[Cha]

6. LOL! They're doing there damnest....that's true.

[valphoosier]

52. Not voting...

That's sure a great solution to our problems.

[sandnsea]

5. In all fairness

This has already been posted and might maybe be a bit overboard on this particular subject. Unless I'm missing something.

[Jim Sagle]

7. As a fairly rabid Dean supporter, I will admit this about Dean:

He has VERY sharp elbows. But his opponents do too. Whoever wins, it'll work out OK. And then we'll go get those Bush bastards!

[helleborient]

8. No more saying they are above sniping

at other candidates for John Edwards or John Kerry...they are willingly helping the media to prolong the confrontation.

The campaign is heating up.

[renie408]

15. John Edwards is 'sniping'

at Dean because he takes exception to Dean telling a bald faced lie about him and the other nominees that was designed to make Dean look good and them look bad?? Christalmighty, do you think saying crap like that is really going to win friends and influence people? Can you even HEAR yourself?

[AP]

24. Edwards has to confront this because, if Dean doesn't get the nomination,

black voters will be left with the false impression that the nominee doesn't really talk about race when there isn't a black face in the room. This comment has the potential to reduce turnout among the most loyal demographic for the Democratic Party, AND IT ISN'T EVEN TRUE!!!!

[helleborient]

28. I'm responding to John Edwards' statement plus...

Additional comments from his official campaign.

How long will his campaign use this? Will it be brought up in the next debate?

Is that not then an attack on another candidate?

I think they will all do it and it's a sign of the campaign heating up...I don't think portraying John Edwards as being above attacking other candidates when he sees an opening is completely true.

It was a dumb comment...Edwards was right to attack it, and he is probably making his campaign stronger. His campaign knows how to attack back and defend just like the other campaigns.

I like to see that, because if he is the nominee, I hope he will stand up and call much of what Bush says lies...Howard Dean does do that, and I would like to see all of the candidates do that since they can point out the lies told about each other.

[AP]

39. Gentle spin?

Responding to a Dean attack is an attack, so don't criticize Dean for attacking?

You really think this will stick?

[Nicholas_J]

9. Dean will lose

All of the support he has outside of the anti-war movement soon enough.

If Ed Koch called Dean the worse of the democratic candidates, and is planning on voting for Bush, Denas candidacy has shatterd the Democratic party, and there is no chance of the candidate getting the absolitely needed swing vote.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[virtualobserver]

48. it needed to be shattered.....

the old guard is resisting. The tired and dead Democratic party needed to be rebuilt.

[Nicholas_J]

51. Dean is older guard than the old guard, and far more conservative

Indeed, as Norman Solomon observes, there's a real disconnect between Dean's media image and his record.


"But the Democratic Leadership Council need not despair. Most of the nation's political journalists, including pro-Democrat pundits, insist that the party should not nominate someone too far 'left' -- which usually means anybody who's appreciably more progressive than the DLC. That bias helps to account for the frequent mislabeling of Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who has risen to the top tier of contenders for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
After Dean officially announced his campaign on June 23, some news stories identified him with the left. It's a case of mistaken identity. 'He's really a classic Rockefeller Republican -- a fiscal conservative and social liberal,' according to University of Vermont political scientist Garrison Nelson."

Slate's William Saletan notices the discrepancy, too. The establishment doesn't

http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/27/we_473_02.html#one


Those who know Dean say he’s no classic liberal
By ROSS SNEYD

Associated Press Writer

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Howard Dean may be many things, say those who worked with him over nearly a dozen years as Vermont governor, but an elitist liberal is hardly one of them.

He’s actually a lot more moderate — many would say conservative — than the reputation he’s built during his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.


http://premium1.fosters.com/2003/news/may%5F03/may%5F19/news/reg%5Fvt0519a.asp

Is Howard Dean the Crypto-Republican Candidate?




Though Dean tries to give the impression that he is for the average man, Elizabeth Ready, the liberal Democrat state auditor and a regular Dean adversary when she served in the Legislature, makes it clear that "his top advisors were all money people, brokers and bankers."

Thinking Independents and Democrats must avoid any connection to the Republican-influenced Dean Campaign. It would be a disaster if Dean were to become the Democratic candidate for president. Bush would win an easy victory by tarring Dean as a soft-headed liberal who is out of touch with the national mainstream.


http://www.hermes-press.com/HDean/dean_republican.htm

Over 11 years, he restrained spending growth to turn a large budget deficit into a surplus, cut taxes, forced many on welfare to go to work, abandoned a sweeping approach to health-care reform in favor of more incremental measures, antagonized environmentalists, won the top rating from the National Rifle Association and consistently embraced business interests.

After winning the first of his five elections for governor by more than 50 points, he barely got a majority in 2000, in part because of third-party challenges from the left that, in the 2002 election absent Dr. Dean, helped hand the governor's chair to a Republican.

To the dismay of liberals in the Legislature who wanted to expand social and environmental programs, Dr. Dean and his chief economic adviser, Harlan Sylvester, a conservative stockbroker and investment banker, stuck with the Snelling budget-cutting plan. Helped by a booming economy, the state's finances improved sharply. Dr. Dean lowered income tax rates by 30 percent.


http://www.politicalpunk.com/~politica/politicalpunkfordeanarchive/000129.php


http://www.politicalpunk.com/~politica/politicalpunkfordeanarchive/000129.php

Why bother. The kind of changes Dean brings are those that the Traditional Republican Party platform is based on , and aptly, Dean is described in many plaves, by many Vermonters as a "Rockerfeller Republican" Dean and investment banker beofre he became a doctor will be a nice pocket sized president for the conservatives on Wall Street, Instead of the White House having Ken Lay to advise them on energy policy, Dean will have the S&P 500 companies to simply dictate to him what the Government will do.

We have someone just like Dean already in the White House.

[sandnsea]

14. Oh f'k Ed Koch

I heard that interview this morning and I just wanted to punch him in the face. If he's going to vote for Bush, he's not a Democrat. Kick him to the curb.

[renie408]

17. Watch out!

We got another puncher!!

[sandnsea]

21. lol

Aw cripes Renie, you just crack me up. Thank god for you, you always lighten my day.

That interview really did tick me off though.

[Ediacara]

34. LOL

[genius]

16. The anti-war people aren't supporting him either.

They're going for Kucinich. And the African-Americans know how racist Dean is when it comes to the criminal justice system. He wants to convict and execute the people the cops are picking up (disproportionately black.)

[helleborient]

29. Why did the DC City Council Members endorse Dean?

Are they all insane??

[MercutioATC]

41. Possibly because Dean supports voting rights for D.C.....?

And is the only candidate to do so, to the best of my knowledge...

[blm]

45. I thought they all did.

.

[MercutioATC]

46. I haven't heard any of the others say anything about it...

As far as I know, Dean is the first to have addressed the issue.

[mbali]

55. not true

Dean is neither the first nor the only candidate to speak out on this issue.

All of the candidates have been in favor of DC voting rights for years. Lieberman introduced legislation in the Senate last year giving DC full representation in the House and Senate.

[plurality]

49. he's not the only one

Kucinich is also for full DC voting rights and has held this position publicly since early July.

[MercutioATC]

53. You are correct. I just found that. Dean and Kucinich are the only two.

...that are declaring it publicly, anyway.

link:

http://www.fairvote.org/

[mbali]

56. They aren't

Other candidates are not only talking about it, but doing something about it. For example, several of the candidates are trying to pass laws that will actually make this a reality.

[Ediacara]

30. right.... for Kucinich

you mean the 1.5% he's getting in polls? Sharpton and Mosely-Braun are BOTH polling higher than Kucinich, and Dean is kicking all three of their asses.

[renie408]

19. You are getting weirder

all the time. Just because Ed Koch has gone insane doesn't mean he is going to take anybody with him. It is a little dramatic to say that the Dem party is 'shattered'.

[LuminousX]

23. What are you really saying?

What do you want to happen? Do you want all the Dean supporters to go away? Do you want all the enthusiasm to dissapate? Do you believe Dean will give up before votes are cast?

Denas candidacy has shatterd the Democratic party

This is tripe and you know it. The only people 'shattering' the party are people who are blinded by their own hate.

[dsc]

26. Koch endorsed Bush the first time

and I don't even know if he voted for Clinton. Sorry he is no arbiture of Democrats in my book.

[clar]

47. Ed Koch

I can barely even stand to type his name. He's completely barking mad, and NOT a democrat. This is a guy who's rabid musings should be ignored by all dems.

[Jim Sagle]

54. Ed Koch ain't nuthin' but a Republican at this point.

[Ediacara]

11. BTW DrFunkenstein

I really have a lot of respect for you, but your deliberate renaming of this article is on the same sorry level as Nicholas_J. Could you please post articles with their proper title in the future?

[sandnsea]

18. Ummm

I personally think it's a dupe, but again, maybe I missed something.

Anyway, I have renamed articles in the past to draw attention to a point I want to make or because the actual title doesn't accurately describe the article. And I don't post them in LBN exactly so I can draw attention to some portion of the article that I think has been overlooked. Not pertaining to any candidate thing, just general issues. People do it all the time actually.

[Ediacara]

31. his renaming was a deliberate exageration

in an attempt to start flames. And ya... it is a dupe.

[Cha]

12. "Foes take issue with Dean over comments about race"

That's what the name of the article says!


you are instilling your own venom here.

[AP]

22. If I had to guess, I'd say he's not backing down because

his strategy is that if he's not going to get the black vote, he's going to at least make black voters suspicious of the other candidates.

Also, the guy's message is "I'm blunt". He gets a lot of mileage among his base (the angry white liberal) by saying things that are confrontational, that implicitly criticize the Democratic Party, and which seem to be superficially liberal.

One of the things that makes this comment especially silly is that EVERY candidate made comments about QUOTAS numerous times before ALL KINDS of audiennces during the University of Michigan cases, which have been going on for 2 years.

[renie408]

25. I love you, you know that, right?

But you are going grassy knoll on us. I have a hard time believing that Dean popped that comment out as a convoluted attempt to siphon the black vote from others. That would be giving him a lot of credit, dontcha think?

I agree on the rest, though.

[AP]

27. If you aren't attracting the black vote,

and your opponents are, you have to come up with some strategy to deal with it if you want to win the primary.

One way is to plant the seed in the mind of your target audience that the other guys don't care about you when you aren't in the room (and how does one prove conclusively to someone that he or she is talking about that person's concerns when that person is not there?).

I actually thinks this isn't conspiratorial at all and that it's probably very close to the truth.

Dean has made the first part of the race comment several times (and once it triggered a negative comment about it in the Miami paper). You know the campaign read the article, and you know this is a statment they came up with after a strategy session on race ('cause he keeps saying it). And the fact that they aren't willing to appologize or qualify the statement is very revealing. It's so clearly a planned strategy.

What other logical reason explains the comment?

[AWD]

32. Howard Dean once kicked a woman down the stairs

Because her walker was taking up too much space

[MercutioATC]

42. You lie AWD! She didn't have a walker because of Dean's Medicare cuts...

...and Dean sent nuclear waste to her house...

[w4rma]

33. DrFunkenstein, your headline is utterly despicable and over the top

I agree that he misspoke about the "only one" part. But, you DrFunkenstein, are lying about Dean lying and you are implying that he didn't stop saying "only one" after Edwards told him to quit. :thumbsdown:

[dean4america]

35. well...

the discourse of race does not always confine itself to black/white issues - talking about quotas and affirmative action in front of white audiences in and of itself is one thing. however, talking to white audiences about race can also mean talking about race in terms of whiteness, white skin privilege, globalization and multiplicity, and so forth.

I think enright's refutation of the criticism is wrong, however, since even she hasn't figured out (a way to articulate) the numerous discourses at play in saying "speak to white audiences about race" -

yet again, however, I would point out that Dean has been saying the same damn thing for 6 months, and no one has given a good damn about it - bringing it to light after speaking to the CBC is pretty cheap.

[mbali]

44. Not true

It is simply not true that Dean has been saying the same thing for months. Yes, Dean has frequently said that white politicians should talk about race to white audiences. But, as far as anyone can tell, he had NEVER before claimed that he was the ONLY white politician doing so. I have gone back and reviewed numerous speeches and statements of Dean's - including those that he and his supporters claim were identical to his comments at the CBC debate - and discovered that he did not say what he said the other night.

THAT is why his remark at the CBC debate has caused such a furor. And he has made it worse by refusing to even acknowledge that he misspoke. Instead, he has irresponsibly blamed everyone else but himself for the controversy and accused his opponents of an unfair attack. He is not being attacked - he's simply being called on something he said that was untrue, plain and simple.

Lately, Dean's coming off like a loose cannon who either doesn't know what he's talking about or doesn't care and cannot or will not correct himself when he is obviously wrong. Pretty interesting behavior for the candidate who positions himself as the Democrat least likely to emulate George W. Bush.

[The Sushi Bandit]

36. Picture of Dean's main advisor

[MercutioATC]

43. That was almost cute the first 5 times, Sushi Bandit.

You really need some new material...

[polpilot]

37. Dean wins and others whine.

Dean '04...

[Rose Siding]

38. It would take just as much time on Google

to discover that Dean has incorporated that point into *countless* speeches (it's part of his stump: I'm tired of being divided by...) and not just on the occasion of actions in the case or in debates.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Bush,+quota,+Howard+Dean&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=0&sa=N

What's more, she never said no one else ever made the point. She never said he'd trademarked the phrases. She said, "he is out there talking...".

ENTIRELY true, but whatever.

[AP]

40. You know that's not the point, right?

Nobody is denying that dean talks about race.

The problem is that he said, in front of several candidates, that he did something they don't do.

The proof that this is lie isn't revealed by the number of times dean has talked about race. The proof that this was not accurate is that the other candidates do do what he said they didn't do.

[CWebster]

50. Funkenstein

You won't get more support for the candidate you are paid to support by tearing down others.

Weren't Kerry and Edwards from that new democratic team that went for the alter AA rather than do away with it...What the hell does that mean---another attempt to triangulate while sacrificing the entire purpose?

"Both Lieberman and Kerry have embarrassing statements in their pre-presidential-aspirational pasts questioning quotas and quota look-alikes. Lieberman especially had rather a lot of them. In 1995 he said affirmative action programs 'must change because they are inconsistent with the law and basic American values of equal treatment and opportunity.' Another time he said 'You can't defend policies that are based on group preferences as opposed to individual opportunities.' Running for president now and not vice president, it may be hard for him to live these down no matter how many times he genuflects to Maxine Waters.

Kerry, too, has a similar skeleton or two. At Yale in 1992 he said that affirmative action 'kept America thinking in racial terms' and did not help those who needed it most.

'I think they are going to need to clarify their positions in short order,' harrumphed Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU's Washington office.

The clarifying has begun. Lieberman says through a spokesman that he's always supported affirmative action, especially after Clinton's reforms and after some of the most unfair examples had been ruled unconstitutional. (The spokesman did not specify what reforms the Senator had in mind or which Supreme Court decisions the Senator approved.)

Kerry has been equally clear.
"If you read my speech from 1992, you will see that I stated very clearly that I support affirmative action,' Kerry said. 'There was no equivocation. What I objected to then, and still do today, are racial quotas that divide America and create resentment among Americans.'"

http://www.discrimi'ations.us/storage/001801.html

[Mass_Liberal]

57. If you are going to bitch about Dean

why don't you send deanforamerica an e-mail instead of bitching non stop at deanie DUers and durning DU into a BATTLEGROUND.