"Love me, I'm (not really) a liberal", Ted Rall on Howard Dean

[flpoljunkie]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&ncid=748&e=1&u=/030813/7/4ylif.html

According to Vermonters, Dean is a shrewd operator who saw millions of anti-Iraq (news - web sites) war demonstrators last spring for what they were: untapped Democratic primary voters. A few well-placed verbal broadsides spread his reputation as the only presidential contender willing to go after Bush while other Democrats remained silent or supported his war. His opportunistic Bush-bashing attracted liberal voters tired of being taken for granted and disgusted by do-nothing "Republican Lite" Dems.

<snip>

Dean's supporters don't believe what they're told. They hear what they want to believe, and Dean provides the strident vagaries that fuel their self-delusion. "We need to know what the president knew and when he knew it," he spat when Bush got caught lying about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in his State of the Union address. That reference to the 1974 Nixon impeachment hearings affirmed many Democrats' belief that Bush deserves serious punishment for lying about Iraq, but will President Dean turn over Bush to the International War Crimes Tribunal? Not bloody likely. And how can antiwar types reconcile Dean's support for Bush's invasion of Afghanistan (news - web sites)?

<snip>

If elected, Dean says, he plans "to do what Clinton did in 1993. We need to make a genuine effort to start to balance the budget to restore investor confidence. The second thing I would do is to support the small-business community." Some leftie! Like Clinton, he'll clean up the Republican deficit, making it impossible to fund Democratic social programs. He's pro-defense and pro-business. He's committed to the environment but he'll likely disappoint liberals on health care, taxes and trade.



Dean doesn't lie about his intentions. "I'll govern the same way I did in Vermont," he promises. So he's not the Great Left Hope. But anybody-but-Bush Democrats desperately need a hero, and Dean's elected.

[unfrigginreal]

1. Let's just look at you first paragraph.

According to Vermonters, Dean is a shrewd operator who saw millions of anti-Iraq (news - web sites) war demonstrators last spring for what they were: untapped Democratic primary voters. A few well-placed verbal broadsides spread his reputation as the only presidential contender willing to go after Bush while other Democrats remained silent or supported his war. His opportunistic Bush-bashing attracted liberal voters tired of being taken for granted and disgusted by do-nothing "Republican Lite" Dems.

This is a bad thing?

[ArkDem]

3. Depends on how you feel about opportunism..

.

[trogdor]

22. Just because Ted Rall says it...

doesn't make it true. As Emeril Lagasse might say, middle of the road common sense doesn't come seasoned.

[Droopy]

4. The writer is questioning Dean's sincerity on the issue

Later in the article, the writer points out Dean's support for the war in Afghanistan. So, was Dean really against the Iraq war- does he really care?- or was he just trying to pick up some votes and momentum from the anti-war movement?

[Cha]

7. The anti-war movement on the attack on Iraq was very unpopular

at the time of Govenor Dean's stance! It's pretty damn disingenous to question it.

[KoKo]

17. After 9/11 who didn't support the war on Afghanistan? Bush told everyone

that the terrorists were there and people were angry and upset. I didn't go along with the Afghanistan invasion and many here on DU didn't either, but Dean is not insane. No politician would have any chance if he/she said they were against Afghanistan! That would be political suicide. It's been hard enough to get a poltician to admit that Iraq was wrong. And, the few who have in the House and Senate have been villified. So, for Dean to say we shouldn't have gone in based on faulty intelligence is a good thing...and a courageous thing. If he's lying.....I don't even care at this point. We just needed a candidate to say it! To give us back up.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. Lessee here...

A politician in a democratic republic, based upon representation of the will of the people, sees the reaction of the people to the war, agrees with that reaction and campaigns in a manner that promises to represent the will of those people.

The churl. The bounder. The roue'. How dare he?!

[blm]

5. No...

I'm not an advisor to Ted Rall. ;)))

But, the points made are eerily similar.

[Cha]

6. Not according to all Vermonters! Because I know some

People from Vermont who genuinely like Govenor Dean and are behind him and are his most avid supporters.

Poor ted rall wants to label Dr Dean and thinks People don't understand what they are getting with him!

Anyone know ted rall's e-mail?

[KoKo]

8. So, who does Rall support? Kucinich? If Dean isn't liberal enough, then

who would be his choice. Anyone have any guesses?

I'm amazed at all the Dean attacks showing up like mushrooms everywhere since he's taken the lead. I love Rall's cartoons....but I don't really get this harsh article. And, I'm suspicious of the anti-Dean articles wondering which candidate has a hand in this......given what happened to Gore...I hate to see stuff like this coming from Liberals trashing each others candidates at this early stage.

[Cha]

9. I was wondering the same thing after I read the article...so who

does ted rall think is the person to take on the bushwa?

[western mass]

10. love me ... etc

So far, I've found the "Dean is a conservative" charges as simplistic and shallow as the "Dean is a left-liberal" charges. Here's a nice, detailed article on the subject:

"The Progressive Case for Howard Dean"

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16592

BTW, as a progressive, I want to know why wild deficit spending is suddenly a "liberal" ideal? It's stupid, and being for balanced budgets doesn't make you a conservative, it just means you're sane.

Dean likes to say he's no Wellstone, and he's right. But his positions are nuanced. For example, hearing that he supports NAFTA gave me real pause. His actual position isn't that bad for a liberal. (I think WTO has to be razed from the ground up, but I'm willing to accept less from a candidate for now).

<snip from the article>

Trade: Dean has pledged to renegotiate current trade agreements (including NAFTA) and oppose new trade agreements that do not require the enforcement of internationally recognized workers' rights and environmental standards. He will also "oppose any further rounds of the World Trade Organization agreements that do not make substantial progress on incorporating" these rights and standards. When asked about policy toward Africa and the Caribbean Basin at the NAACP Presidential Forum, Dean voiced his support for debt forgiveness and remarked that "we need to get the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank off the backs of these countries. ... he conditions that are attached mean that the whole country depends on a free market system in order to get food to the poorest people in that country. It doesn't make any sense at all. ... ow that we're imposing a Western economic model on African countries, we find there's famine. What a big surprise. We need to work cooperatively with African governments instead of telling them what to do." Dean was awarded the inaugural Paul Wellstone Award by the AFL-CIO in January 2003 for "Exceptional Support of Workers' Freedom to Form Unions," and maintained a 100% rating with the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education while serving as a state representative. He is also a vocal proponent of workplace democratization, in which employees own the majority of a firm's stock.

[unfrigginreal]

11. Who does Ted Rall support?

I'm pretty sure he doesn't support "do-nothing Republican Lite Dems."

I could be wrong, but I'd be surprised.

[pansypoo53219]

12. shit

i don't NEED the perfect progressive candidate. I WANT BUSH GONE.
AND if Dean can steer us outta the hole that bush has put us in, we CAN be more liberal and progressive because we would have a SURPLUSS. so we should support BALANCED BUDGETS.

[Karmadillo]

13. Is it possible Rall is making a point we should at least consider?

Doesn't mean one doesn't ultimately support Dean if it becomes clear he's the best candidate, but also doesn't mean one dismisses Rall (whose lefty credentials, at minimum, equal those of most of us posting on DU) out of hand because he's raising facts with which we might be uncomfortable.

Is Dean the liberal we're looking for? Maybe, but if what's in this article is true, maybe not. Better to know it several months before the primaries than to find out sometime during Dean's first year in office.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&ncid=748&e=1&u=/030813/7/4ylif.html

<edit>

Even as Joe Lieberman (news - web sites) berates Dean for pulling the Democratic Party too far left, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich attacks him from the left, as nothing more than another Clinton--a Democrat in name only. "If someone wants to be a fiscal conservative, a good place to start is the Pentagon (news - web sites) budget and he's already taken it off the table," rages Kucinich. (Dean on the military: "I don't think you can cut the defense budget.") "How in the world can you be for peace when you won't touch a Pentagon budget that needs war to expand, that needs war in order to justify itself?"

more...

[w4rma]

14. "His base knows exactly how moderate he is. I interviewed dozens …"

…
Of course last week's Dean hype managed to do both at once. It knocked him down by setting him up, in a way. No longer was the question "Is he too liberal to be electable?" Reporters belatedly scoured his record and discovered a fiscal conservative who put balanced budgets before social spending in Vermont, who opposes federal gun control legislation and backs the death penalty for certain crimes. Now the make-or-break question about Dean became: "Will liberals desert him when they figure out that he's actually a moderate?" Then came other pre-fab worries about the problems of sudden success: Had Dean peaked too soon? Could his fledgling campaign handle the attention? And OK, maybe he was moderate enough to be electable, but was he likable enough? Was his reputation for "straight talk" just a euphemism for brusque and arrogant?

Hanging out with the local Dean folks was my way of getting out of what his campaign dismisses as "the media echo chamber," and trying to figure out what's really going on. I've lived here almost 20 years. I know the San Francisco Dean phenomenon is not a microcosm of what it will take to get him elected; I saw the way the GOP smeared House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- and pushed her to the center some -- by calling her a "San Francisco Democrat" before she even took over the leadership post. I know we're DLC founder Al From's worst nightmare. But I also saw some intriguing things following Dean around San Francisco at the end of July, and talking to his supporters the week after he'd gone. The Bay Area Dean machine is attracting more than the usual suspects: It's neither the Greens nor the City Hall regulars; it's neither the moneyed elite nor the rabble; it's not just the young and the hip; it's not ponytailed '60s holdovers -- it's all of them, and then some. I met Republicans and Ross Perot voters who were supporting the antiwar candidate who promises to repeal Bush's tax cuts. And I met Dean himself, and watched two speeches. You can't get his charisma without seeing him in person.
…
I ran into Well co-founder, entrepreneur and activist Larry Brilliant, the only other person besides Amy Rao I knew personally, and he was beaming. "Look at this crowd!" he said, marveling at its size and diversity. Later, he explained Dean's appeal in an e-mail. "Liberals like myself may be disappointed to find out he's a fiscal conservative, in the mold of Clinton not FDR, and a moderate on most things -- except this obscene ideological 'coup' of the Bush crowd. But I'm surprised how happy I am that someone is finally calling the emperor on the fact that he has no clothes. I was afraid Bush's deceptions would go unchallenged. That alone makes me love Howard Dean. I also happen to think he can win."
…
The UFCW crowd seemed a lot like Donna Brazile: They were ready to love everybody. Only the leftier candidates -- Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun, Gephardt and Dean -- showed up; Sharpton couldn't make it, but Kerry appeared by satellite, as befits his attempt to be a more centrist liberal. All of them got big cheers. These were the folks Al From tried to warn us about. But if Dean hadn't been red-baited by the DLC, you might well hear him as the moderate in the race. He criticized Kucinich and Moseley Braun's call for single-payer universal healthcare, the left's politically impossible dream, as well as Gephardt's expensive public-private hybrid. Kerry vied with Dean for the moderate mantle with his relatively modest healthcare plan, but overall Dean came off as the fiscal conservative in the bunch. Amazingly, he got the biggest hand from this union audience when he called George Bush a "borrow and spend, credit-card Republican" and promised to erase the deficit if he's elected.
…
One thing I don't worry about is that his lefty base doesn't know what he stands for, and will bolt when they realize he's a moderate. His base knows exactly how moderate he is. I interviewed dozens of his liberal devotees, and they all know the not-so-liberal aspects of his record. Someone at the Meetup lamented his staunch pro-Israel stance; several people I met said they differed with him on the death penalty. Brilliant says he has issues with Dean on all of his more conservative stands. "But he's not afraid to say what he thinks. Dean asks the fundamentally sound questions and does not have an ideological answer that trumps reason, as Bush does."
…
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/08/11/dean/

[w4rma]

15. Ted Rall's e-mail: [e-mail]

Ted's Email Guidelines
http://www.tedrall.com/email.htm

DeanDefense.org
http://www.deandefense.org/

[KoKo]

16. Yes, you say what I've felt...Angry folks on the Left have been forgotten.

and Dean early on was the only one who spoke to our anger. I'm not surprised at his broad appeal. And, I'm not surprised at some of the older than 60's Democrats who support him. I noticed at the anti-Iraq Invasion Demonstrations here in NC that it was the 60 plus folks who showed up in bigger numbers than one would think. They were angry and wanted to show it. And, with the ones I talked to.....it was the Florida Selection that they were angry over as well as the "war" and
that nothing was said about it by our party. The Iraq Invasion Protests started the ball rolling for them and the fact that those folks know what WWII was about....and had depression era parents made them even more angry with what has happend to our country with the BFEE. They were horrified that Bush had come in the way he did and was getting away with everything......but still hoped our party would stand up and fight them back. Dean has spoken to that anger. And those older folks are more conservative than the Boomers behind them. They don't care that Dean may not be a liberal as I or some others may want.

[Larkspur]

18. Yes, that's why Dean stands out from the Dem Prez pack

He lent his voice to us frustrated Dems and Independents, who watched the other Dem candidates either cop out or cave in to Bush. He's our tool as much as we are his supporters because he eloquently voices our complaints to the Dem leadership as well as to the Repukes. He's been loyal to use about this and that's why we are loyal to him.

[librechik]

19. one small point--Dean is loud in his criticism of the Afghanistan debacle

and doesn't claim to be antiwar as such. He's against the pre-emptive doctrine.

[pansypoo53219]

20. gee

and that pre-emptive shit was SUCH a good idea.

[western mass]

21. Dean campaign about more than Dean

Truth is, I'm behind the Dean campaign not because of Dean (who isn't a progressive's wet dream, though I find him quite acceptable) but because of what the campaign is doing: bringing back real, proud, vocal, bare-knuckled opposition back into the mainstream political discourse. It's been missing from the Democratic Party for the last decade, and a generation of young people have grown up in political apathy because they've never seen what real political opposition looks like. If Dean's mass of grassroots supporters can continue to demand this sort of thing from Democrats, anger and fight rather than politeness and acquiescence, it will be a good thing regardless of whether Dean wins the nomination.

[glitch]

23. Exactly!

Anyone aggressively fighting Bushco has a huge advantage with We, The People.

Welcome to DU!