Dems afraid of Dean victory.

The idea that Dean is unelectable is espoused primarily by people who no nothing about his platform. The thing that scares the Dem machine more than anything else is that he's not a Washington insider, and if he were elected they still wouldn't be invited to join Dean's White House staff.

If Republicans want to believe that Dean is unelectable, fine by me. But just leave the keys on the desk when you clear out the Oval Office in Jan '05, OK?

 

And folks who look at reputable polls.

You think Karl Rove won't take Dean, or whoever the Dem candidate is, seriously? THAT's delusional.

Meanwhile, you win today's "'Here hoping that wishing will make it so" Award."

Congratulations. For your prize, you get a cookie.

 

i don't buy this. many dems from the midwest and the south are seriously concerned with the downticket effects dean could have on them. these are serious people who are going to learn about the guy before coming to a final decision about him. if they're concerned, its because they look at the Dean campaign and calculate how it effects them. you can disagree with their calculations, but to assume that people that disagree with you are ignorant is a great way to get your ass handed to you.

as for Washington insiders getting jobs in the Dean administration. if he wins (which I don't think he can), he'll have to hire them. he can start without them and he'll get eaten up by the bureaucracy and Congress. look at Clinton's first 2 years. washington insiders will get their jobs because the WH has to know how to get things done. if it doesn't it will get eaten alive.

 

.......pssssst.........Obie.

Do NOT eat the cookie. It's from Karl's "Rove 'n' Rummy Special Recipe Book," if you know what I mean.......

 

Clearly Dean should run a campaign that does nothing but highlight how moderate he will be on all things, how he will be a "uniter not a divider" and then, once elected, unleash an extremist agenda that splits the country into bitterly polarized camps the likes of which this nation hasn't seen in a century.

That seems to work.

 

obie, you're spot on... And hold Karl to that cookie... but just like a tax cut, I'm doubting you'll get it... actually he'll probably give you the cookie, sneak in the backdoor and take the entire contents of your freezer...

PS. The more Dean rants, the more energized his base becomes, when the base turns out, he'll waltz to the middle, where to be honest, he's probably more comfortable... I don't think Democratic leadership will have a hard time with Dean, because in a year, he will be the Democratic leadership...

 

You should have posted earlier...because YOU would have been in the running for todays "Here's Hoping that Wishing Will Make It So Awards."

Let's see....I am out of cookies...but I can give you a half eaten Kit Kat bar -- not snapped cleanly. OK by you??

Anyway, it's the thought that counts, right??

 

Karl, csc, anyone...can any of you point me to a poll supporting your point? Every poll *I* see has Dean running like 2-3 points behind whoever is the strongest Dem. Considering Dean's advantages over those Dems in money and volunteers (given how important GOTV has gotten in the last 6-8 years, I think his volunteer base is massively underrated), what I've seen of the polls would better support an argument that Dean is MORE electable than anyone save maybe Clark. Surely, Dean's money and manpower can overcome those piddly little 2-3 points.

Now, if I start seeing polls where Kerry or Gephardt are running 7-8 points ahead of Dean, that's a different story. Until then, I'll wonder if this is one of those memes that develops directly in the teeth of the facts. But that's how our media operate, in general. Someone thinks of something because it's clever, other people think it's clever, and they keep pounding it no matter the evidence.

 

i don't think a national poll matters at all right now. nationwide, people aren't focused on the election, so when you get a Bush v Dem list, you're really only getting a measure of focused dem support for different candidates.

i'm not basing my idea on current polls. i don't think that polling for an election that is still a year away matters.

Further, any poll reflects people's view of the candidates well before Bush starts attacking them. That's my problem with Dean, he's not going to survive being labeled a northeastern, liberal, arrogant, naive dove. He'll fight Bush but he'll still lose that perceptions war. GOTV is very important in a close election, which is why it has mattered recently. I don't think Dean's going to get close enough for GOTV to matter.

I realize you think this is simply a referendum on Bush. I think that's correct to a point. My problem with your theory is that you think everyone will be able to perceive reality (economy strong/weak and iraq stable/disaster) whatever it is. I don't. I think elections are about perception. Candidates win by getting people to accept their reality and why they are the right person for that reality. Dean will ultimately lose the perception war (you guys already admit he has lost it when you say he's not as liberal as he is being portrayed).

 

Given Bush's campaign budget, I don't see how Dean is any weaker here than Gephardt (ultimate Beltway insider, pawn to Big Labor) or Edwards (two words: trial lawyer) or what have you. If Bush wants to slime people, and the free media let him get away with it, they're all weak in the face of a $200M onslaught. If anything, Dean is in good position on this score, since he's gonna raise the most money.

 

To be honest, I don't think about Gephardt much more than I think about Lieberman, I don't think either have a chance of winning.

Edward's being pinned as a trial lawyer only helps with the Republican base, I don't think its a killer among moderates and swing voters. You were in NC for the race, I'm sure the Republican tried it there.

I think Dean's weaknesses are the worst because they hurt him the most with swing voters in Midwest and South swing states. I still believe the race comes down to those places. Gore states plus 5 or so targeted Bush states is the strategy I'd pursue.

I imagine Dem anger is going to continue to help with money and I think Trippi could be brought in by any candidate and keep a pretty good Internet collection coming.

 

But that two to three points is huge...really huge.

See:

http://people-press.org/reports/dis...p3?ReportID=196

"While Bush runs even against an unnamed Democrat, he still runs well ahead of all his Democratic rivals, even those such as Rep. Dick Gephardt, Sen. Joe Lieberman and Sen. John Kerry, who have relatively broad name recognition"

Of course the issue is NOT just whether Dean can get as much electoral support as any other candidate NOW, its whether ANY of the Dems (a) can beat Bush and (b) if they can't, how badly can the Dems afford to lose?

You can make the argument that, right now, Bush is at his most vulnerable, no? Iraq is still a mess, jobs aren't growing.

Yet, here he is, pretty much with a commanding lead. If the Other D/K vote splits down the middle come election time, versus Dean he gets 56% of the vote -- a landslide victory by any definition.

If GW wins by this margin -- not guaranteed but not highly improbable -- the Democratic party may take years to recover.

THAT's why Terry McAuliffe is soiling his pants at the moment. And rightly so.

Would the Democrats do better, even if they lose, with someone else? I think the answer can certainly be yes.

Look, anything can happen. It's a year away, it could all fall apart for W, and anybody, I mean ANYBODY, could waltz into the White House.

But all signs point in one direction, and the guys at the DNC are in serious damage control mode. I don't blame them.

 

I forgot to mention, could you please not include me in the same sentence as Karl? thanks.

 

KK is on my ignore list, so let me ask without reading his post: Does the cookie come with Karl's special secret white frosting (handmade, of course)?

My problem with this thinking is that Dean is not even close to being the most liberal candidate in the field (and no, I'm not including Kucinich). He's to the right of both Kerry and Gephardt overall on most of the wedge issues.

I fear that a lot of the people who think that Dean would be a national liability are basing that on the fact that he's from Vermont, and since the last three Democratic Presidents all came from the South, they need a Southerner. It's either that, or the "unnamed" sources all just want Lieberman.

 

Howard Dean reminds me of those late night TV preachers who heal fallen members of their congregation:

PLAYING DOCTOR
The Kerry campaign in Iowa is looking into the events that transpired on Saturday in Des Moines, when former Vermont Gov. Howie Dean, a licensed physician, helped a man who appeared to suffer a seizure on a street. It turns out the man was a Dean volunteer, and Dean just happened to be passing by when he noticed a crowd and wondered what had happened. According to eyewitness accounts reported by numerous press outlets, Dean pushed his way into the crowd (apparently certain that a doctor was needed for whatever was occurring), cradled the man's head in his lap and administered a brief examination by taking his pulse and asking him a few questions about his medical history.

Surprisingly, this is the fourth time that Dean has been in the right place at the right time during his campaigning, and has played a role in helping an ill supporter.

"It's just way too coincidental," says a John Kerry volunteer in Des Moines. "And it was one of his people that was sick. It just looks like a setup. Most doctors goes a lifetime without being on the scene of a something like this, and it happens to him four times in four months? Maybe he is making people sick."

 

Assuming you don't mean it in the metaphysical sense of future history being as unchangeable as past history...

I don't mean to pick on Karl, because he's just echoing a very common sentiment, but I don't understand that part I highlighted. I mean, any pol who breaks even on approve/disapprove cannot rationally be considered a shoo in. Maybe insiders are being clever and harping on the $200M, I don't know. Anyway, while a generic Dem runs ahead of any specific Dem at this point, I think that's more likely caused by pollees not knowing the specific Dems, and therefore being reluctant to commit to a specific Dem, than it is that pollees DO know the specific Dems, and are rejecting them. Man, in some ways, this is so much like '92 it's ridiculous. Basically, then, the Commentariat was just as quick to dismiss the Dem candidates, and for alot of the same reasons. Look, once the winner emerges in, what, March at the latest, his (or, in deference to Ms. Moseley-Braun, her) profile will go way, way up among those who vote but aren't consumed with politics. The Dem. candidate will start to get tons of free media. He'll start to look more presidential just by being the nominee.

Yeah, in many ways. In most ways. But like I just wrote, you can more definitively make the case that the Dem. candidate looks worse now than he will in 6 months.

As a quick side note...your link didn't work for me, but it seems like it has Bush running 12 points ahead of Dean, which is 2-3 points better than he runs against the other Dems. If so, that poll has Bush is about 5 points stronger for Bush than how I thought he was running.

Back to your post. Why would you write this? LBJ crushed Goldwater in '64...and Nixon won in '68. Nixon crushed McGovern in '72...and Carter won in '76. Reagan crushed Mondale in '84...and Clinton won in '92. Clinton won, IIRC, by 9 points in '96...and Bush almost won in 2000. Anyway, this is another one of those ideas that the Commentariat puts out there directly in the teeth of the facts. It's just weird that anyone believes those blowhards given their spectacular inability to be more accurate than a coin flip. I mean, if you use recent history as a guide, a Bush landslide means the Dems will probably win in '08, and if they don't, they'll surely win in '12.

 

First we get this....

Then we get this...

Look, today isn't like the past....and then again it is.

LBJ crushed Goldwater, and it took conservative Republicans SIXTEEN years to make a comeback. Could you imagine if LBJ had not been mired in Vietnam?

Reagan won in 80, and it took TWELVE YEARS for the Dems to come back. It would have been a lot longer had Alan Greenspan NOT decided to take inflation to zero in 1989-90, and derailed the economy as a result (a mistake he's not making this time).

Let me go slow...SIXTEEN YEARS...TWELVE YEARS.

That's a long, long time.

The prediction business is hazardous. But remember this thread is entitled "Dems Afraid of Dean Victory."

All I am saying is that McAuliffe and his crew have some justification to be crapping in their pants, especially as their major goal is likely to lay the ground work for Hilary.

The boys at the DNC are looking at probabilities now, and there are certain probabilities that make them very very antsy.

Not too hard to understand, methinks.

 

Dean is an angry Yankee liberal. He personifies the kind of Democrat Zell Miller hates. It's not so much a political issue as it is a cultural issue.

 

???

Nixon was elected in 1968. Don't try to argue that he wasn't a conservative.

 

On domestic issues he was pretty liberal (especially by today's stadnards), but Keller is definitely fudging. If Dean does a McGovern impersonation in 2004, it won't change the odds in 2008 one iota.

 

More of a confederate flag waving, gun toting angry white man. But he was against the war so he must be great.

 

Karl, just when I think it can't get any shorter, you chop a couple of feet off of the school bus I imagine you riding as a child.

 

It's interesting how many hurdles Dean has cleared over the last year, yet people continue to underestimate him.

First they said nobody knew who he was. Then, last February, he made his big speech and got himself on the map. Then they said he doesn't have any money. Well, he used the internet and some celebrity endorsements to become the leading fundraiser. Then they said he isn't leading in the polls. Well, over the summer, he pulled ahead in NH and Iowa. Now they are saying, he can't win in the South and he can't beat Bush. It's amazing how quickly the same group of people keep moving the goalposts for Dean and he keeps proving them wrong.

I hope the trend continues.

Murf