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Was calling Dean the unstoppable frontrunner,30 points ahead of everyone he was being touted as being the most accurate pollster analyzing polls.
The facts are that like buying a house or a car, when choosing a to nominate a politician to run from one party or the other, the buyer starts looking very close at the product they are being sold.
As each caucus or primary becomes imminent, the local media in each state is going to start comparing each candidates campaign talk, to their actual performance while in office, and in Deans case, there is simply the greatest disconnect between his rather conservative performance as Governor, and his rather progressive campaign talk.
Dean's record as Governor was one of always spouting the democratic party line. As long as there was no real issue or pending legislation at hand, but for the most part siding with conservatives and republicans when something real was going down.
Examples, the Snelling progressive income tax, which was voted for and set in motion prior to Snellings death and Dean becoming Governor,
was responsible for eliminating the 65 million dollar deficit that the state of Vermont was facgin when Dena came into office. It was also regarded as the first and best attempt to create a fair, progressive income tax system anywhere in the United States since the inception og income taxes. Dean allwed the tax to be rolled back as it was scheduled, in opposition to the requests of the Democratic Party in Vermont, and almost immediately, budget problems began cropping up again, as soon as the tax was rolled back.
Then Dean resorted to sending budgets to the legislature to cut social programs such as medicaid, and the states prescription drug program. Almost every year Dean requeested large cuts to the budgets for these programs, opposing increases to income taxes to fund them, while at the same time raising the state sales tax back from the 4 percent it was rolled back to 5 percent. In order to avoid re-instituting the progressive income tax, Dean chose to raise virtually all of the state's other consumption taxes as well. Standard conservative eceonomic ideas, becasue they are flat taxes, and essentially are more of a burden to the poor and middle class than they are to the rich.
Dean was sued twice for his attempts to cut medicaid, and was found to have violated Vemront Law in his attempts on the two occassions that he tried to make these cuts, the courts stating that he had exceeeded his powers as Governor in making these cuts. Same thing happened when he tried cutting nearly a million dollars from the Defender Generals budget. Finally, after he continually vetoed or blcoked efforts to control pharmaceutical companies gouging the states VSCRIPT Program, the federal courts found that Deans alternative program using Medicaid waivers violated federal laws and this program had to be suspended for six months while the Democrats Vermont Legislature came up with an alternative solution to keep the program alive. In essence Dean spent most of his tenure as Governor trying to eliminate the health programs he now claims as his, and which should make him the best candidate regarding health care.
Forgetting thefact that Dean is the candidate who started running on the issue of immediately providing health care that "cannot be taken away from you", and after all the other cnadidates came up with plans, Dean began stating that now he would not provide this health care immediately, but wait until the budget was balanced to do so. Many people who supported Dean and even his repeal of all of the Bush tax cuts have begun to rethink their support of Dean, as he is now the candidate who is going to repeal the Bush tax cuts, giving thme absolutely nothing in return for the increased taxes they will face when he repeals the middle class portion of the cuts along with the cuts to the wealthiest two percent.
Dean claims that the middle class did not get a tax cut, but most people are asking, if this is so, thent why repeal the middle class tax cuts at all, since they do not exist?
The real issue is not that the media and the DLC are going after Dean,that there is some plot, but the fact that when examined close up, Deans ideas do not seem to have any substance, and his frequent changes in position make him seem even less trustworthy, and very much the "career politician" who will say anything to get elected, and revert to supporting the special interests who have backed him for years.
As I have often said, Deans large lead will shrink as soon as proplr get the opportunity to compare what Dean has done and said in the past, and how what he has said in the past more closely matches what he has done in the past, which was to greatly favor the issues that were important to the pharmaceutical, health, and other large industries who were the largest financers of his campaigns for Governor, every time he ran for Governor, and the fact that he blatently did virtually anything that these large corporation did when they demanded it.
His reversal on legislation requiring the labeling of dairly products that came from animals given various growth hormones at the last minute after a private meeting with Monsanto, the producers of the hormone, after he had supported the legislation is one case. His vetoing of pharmaceutical legislation that a large pharmaceutical company wanted killed after giving Dean a relatively large camapgin contribution three days before his veto is another. The sudden switch in the sale of Vermont Yankee to Entergy/Koch Industries, after receiving large campaign contributions from energy executives who stood to make eight times the amount of money from the sale of their shares than they would if the original company was given the sale is another.
Voters arent that stupid, there need be no secret plot against Dean. His own record and behavior, under closer scrutiny is more than enough to give Democrats making decisions pause.
Caveat Emptor is the real reason for the slowing of Deans momentum, and the fact that on the whole the public favors one Washington insider or other over Dean who tries to presenr himself as an outsider, but is as much a career politician, beholden to special interests as any other candidate for the party nomination.
If you add up the numbers and support for all of the Washington insiders, the support for Washington career democrats on the whole far exceeds the support for Deans claim to "reclaiming the democratic party".
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