Lessig

My guess is Pennsylvania.

-kd

Howard Dean presents a very interesting conflict for me personally. Like our host, I was grown to be a staunch Republican (and Southern Baptist) and, like him, the more I learn and experience, the less common ground I find with the values I grew up with.

For example: I agree with Howard Dean when he questions our entrance into the war with Iraq, but having served with the 101st Airborne Division, I'm much more interested in my fellow soldiers' welfare than second-guessing the motives that landed them there. I believe that Dean needs to shift his focus to a plan to withdraw our troops and finish the mission rather than continuously harp on the Bush administration's reasons for putting them there in the first place. In other words, on this issue, I'd like to see a more pragmatic Howard Dean.

Another example not really related to Dean, but still a divisive liberal/conservative disconnect in my mind: What's with the current Ten Commandments issue? It seems to me that it's a waste of taxpayers' money to litigate such a non-issue. Perhaps it's the last vestige of conservatism in me, but I am amazed that this has become such a focal point in American jurisprudence and politics. Liberals should view the Ten Commandments in much the same way that they choose to view topics like pornography and abortion: If it offends you, don't look at it and/or stay away from it. Otherwise, leave it alone. If it ain't broke, don't fix it...and I'd be very curious to hear the arguments supporting the assertion that displaying the Ten Commandments somehow "breaks" our society.

I'm pretty stoked about Dean's use of the Internet, although I attribute most of the credit for that to Trippi. If we can keep the Internet free and more politicians learn from Dean's example, this country might just get a Clue about how to be a democratic republic. Doc Searls in 2008? :)

--Jason

welcome to Geneva!!

WSIS has not free wireless?

You know what's more exciting and relevant than hearing about Dean's endorsement? Hearing about all the candidate's relevant ideas from their own mouths. I found it refreshing when Kucinich, Sharpton, and Braun spoke out again Koppel's desire to turn that debate into a campaign ad for Dean. These candidates wanted to talk about the issues instead of being judged by poll standings and campaign funds. The horse race and follow-the-leader is what hurts our ability to make informed decisions about the candidates. We should be encouraged to vote on the issues and with our hearts. We should not be encouraged to follow the campaign funds and vote for whomever has the most money or the latest endorsement news. I think the San Francisco mayoral race (where a Democrat outspend his Green party competition by 10 to 1 and only narrowly beat the Green) shows that a big voter turnout can help close the gap in funding.

A stunning new poll shows President Bush would clobber Democratic front-runner Howard Dean by nearly 2-1 in politically potent New Hampshire - even though Dean has a giant lead over Democratic rivals in the state.

in new hampshire my friends. howard dean is from neighboring vermont.

it is difficult to believe that howard dean will carry a national vote. sure, he'll get the ralph nader vote that al gore lost, but the numbers suggest he'll loose the huge mass of voters in the middle who voted for bill clinton in 92 and 96 and al gore in 2000.

bill clinton's (actually james carville's) winning strategy was to distance himself from the "democratic wing of the democratic party." remember the DLC? the"new democrats" unseated a popular republican and carried influence deep into the congress.

running to the far left of GWB will produce a repeat of the 1972 presidential election where mcgovern won in one state: tiny massachusetts.

and if you don't like the comparison to mcgovern, how about this guy? he didn't do much better.

tbm:

You've got two misconceptions going.

The first is a simple one--that Howard Dean is a far-left candidate. That's a far-out statement--even Dean's opposition to the war is nothing like, say, Dennis Kucinich's position. What is meant by "far-left" these days is, apparently, "FDR/LBJ liberal"--and Dean is a bit to the right of even that.

The second is more complex--the idea that Clinton's politics of personality was good for the Democratic Party. You say the”new democrats” unseated a popular republican and carried influence deep into the congress but, in fact, Bush 41 was not all that popular by the time of the election, and the influence carried into the Congress was Republican. It was under the "new democrats" that the Democratic majority in Congress was lost. The "new democrats" abandoned their core constituencies, adopted Republican policies, and lost their majority.

It worked to get Clinton elected--but, as Robert Caro pointed out in his newest volume on LBJ, "Power corrupts--that has been said and written so often that it has become a cliché. But what is never said, but is just as true, is that power reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, he must conceal those traits that might make others reluctant to give it to him. Once the man has power, it is no longer necessary for him to hide those traits." Power reveals.

Speaking for the moment as an Arkansawyer, I suffered watching Clinton the governor, never once voting for him in a primary election, yet always grudgingly giving him my vote in the general election. When he finally ran for President, I was thrilled to vote for him. "At last," I thought, "the real Bill Clinton will be revealed." What was revealed was a great empty void at the man's center, a petty selfishness in governance that we'd thought was only the man's surface. It turned out that, as Bob Dylan says, "Nothing was revealed."

Power reveals. In LBJ, it revealed, as Caro says, "compassion for the downtrodden, and...a passion to raise them up...to help, moreover, those who most needed help." In Reagan, a right-wing governor was revealed to be a relative moderate on domestic policy--Bush 43, just the reverse.

Anyway, that's the personal politics of Clinton. As to its effect on the Democratic Party, Michael Tomasky takes a generous view here. After acknowledging what he sees as Clinton's accomplishments, he says:

"But there is one way in which Clinton did not rebuild the Democratic Party: from the ground up. Beyond rhetoric, and the occasional action, he didn't really make it a party of the people. He and Al Gore did energize a youth vote in 1992, and he made millions of voters who'd been disaffected feel comfortable voting Democratic again, bringing important states like New Jersey back into the Democratic camp.

"But he never situated the party as an entity that represented the aspirations of its people—its most committed members. Back to Newton: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And the reaction to bringing the party to the center and allying it more closely with corporate donors was that the people at the bottom of the totem pole felt a little detached. (Remember: Fierce loyalty to Clinton within the party's base didn't really kick into fifth gear until the Monica Lewinsky scandal, when many progressives defended Clinton less because of the man himself than because of what they saw as a functional coup d'état.)

"This is where Dean comes in."

And where I will leave it for now, as I have some pretty good code to finish up for an even better cause.

Anyone else think Al Gore wants to be Vice President under Dean, to prime his image for another race in 2008 or 2012?

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