perfidy

I'm a pretty big fan of Howard Dean, and it frosts my cookies to see the Democratic Leadership Congress dismiss him as "unelectable," by which they mean "not on our payroll."

The New Republic recently ran this "agin' him" piece by Jonathan Chait. I thought it was a mildly foolish article that raises a few good points about the dangers posed by the Dean campaign and the potential for his nomination to candidate to go horribly awry (by "horribly awry" in this context I mean Bush winning in a stroll).

Then I forwarded the article to my friend Bootsy, and received in response this gentle fisking:

Prefaced by: I am a raging Deanite:
1. Dean's followers are NOT largely liberal. This is a fallacy perpetrated throughout the media. (resisting urge for conspiracy theory...)
2. Dean does not diametrically oppose Bush. He was opposed to the war, not opposed to all war. He makes a strong case for where we do need to use our military strength and where we do not. In fact, I really can see why Republicans can support Dean. A lot of the issues that the Republican party says they stand for but have lately ignored, especially fiscal responsibility and state's rights, are solid with Dean.
3. I think they underestimate the public's dislike for the Patriot Act.
4. Dean's positions are not unpopular. Fiscal responsibility, pro-choice, health care reform, education reform? Pretty mainstream to me.
5. As a vermonter, I take offense at their generalization of Vermont politics. This is a state with only two gun laws, civil unions, practically socialized school funding, and a very large libertarian element. It is diverse, not extremely liberal. Just ask the guys my dad has breakfast with about Hillary Clinton.

...all this "too liberal" bullshit is code word for "gay lover" and the DNC is just really disgusting me lately. Not only are they distancing themselves from their base but their strategy has proven that it does NOT win elections, I think they are too stubborn and power hungry to give it up.

All true. And all why I think Dean has a better shot than many people give him credit for at winning the primaries and the general elections. He's irascible, he's smart, he doesn't take or give any BS, and he consistently does his homework, thinks about what he wants to say, and admits when he doesn't have a firm answer to a question.

It's like he's from the moon or something.

(And I would like to say, Bootsy is dead on about the "too liberal" epithet.)