Meetup tonight!
No matter where you live, there’s bound to be a Howard Dean Meetup at 7pm tonight at a location somewhere near you. As shown below, over 100 thousand of us have joined the movement!
If, like two-thirds of Democrats (according to this poll), you can’t name any of the announced candidates, I strongly urge you to look at Dr. Dean’s positions. There’s plenty of good sense, plenty of well thought out ideas. He’s a mainstream Democrat, not the leftist that the opposition is trying to paint him as. While I don’t agree with some of his positions—because they aren’t as progressive/leftist as I’d like them to be—I admire his ability to articulate Democratic concepts, even nuanced and complex ones, with clarity and with force. The man is a communicator!
Dean is willing to take political risks, and his team is fast-moving enough to realize that their grassroots appeal through the internet version of word-of-mouth is a powerful tool for building a nationwide base. This insurgency campaign is building itself into a force in conventional political terms, converting its net-connected membership into political workers at the nitty-gritty ward/precinct/district level. It’s exciting to see, exciting to be part of. And it’ll be even more exciting if we can pull it off.
Back to that CBS poll for a second… Much discussion, such as in the comments to a recent Daily Kos entry, has revolved around bemoaning this seemingly-low interest in the candidates, and around a different poll, by CNN/USA Today/Gallup, in which Joe Lieberman’s name recognition seems to make him a leading candidate. However, I’d like to quote a paragraph in the discussion of the CBS poll:
Moreover, when voters—Democrats or otherwise—are asked off the top of their head to name a Democratic candidate running for president, two-thirds are unable to do so. For the first time, Howard Dean is now the most frequently mentioned by voters, with 11%, followed by 7% who say John Kerry, and 5% who mention Joe Lieberman. Among Democratic voters, more mention Dean than any other candidate.
[emphasis added]
Perhaps the Dean message really is beginning to be heard. As more Democrats do start paying fuller attention to the race to choose who will send Dubya and the neocon fundamentalists permanently back to Crawford, the vision and intellect of Howard Dean will become more evident.
You owe it to yourself to take a close look at Dean. I think you’ll like much of what you see. What better time to start than at your local Meetup tonight?
Comments
i hope you will also suggest to all your peace-loving readers to check out dennis kucinich… his position statements can be read at www.kucinich.us
thanks!
Good to see you’re back. If you need posting subject ideas, drop me a line. You’re supposed to be my contact group on Californian politics!
There had been a lot of discussion in blogistan in the early days as to who was the real progressive. IMO it’s misleading to refer to a candidate as being to the “left” of another; Dean, for example, might be more “conservative” than Kucinich, yet on further examination the real difference might lie in what either candidate believes is feasible. My enthusiasm for Dean arose from the nightmare of the Dukakis [presidential] campaign, which was so badly run it looked like GOP operatives had moled their way inside.
The GOP’s inherent advantage as campaigns and policy changers is their business background. Basically, they have the extreme aggressiveness and single-minded focus of modern American business--attributes which are prima facie virtues in the business world, but highly destructive in public policy.
Dean has enough of the business background to be aggressive and utilize victories, but he’s also mindful of the dangers of single-minded focus.
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