No, that's not what I'm asking you to accept at all.  In fact, I believe that the only way to address this issue is to be MORE upfront about the racial dimensions and the way they are woven into other dimensions, enabling those of us who want to ignore them (in the South and the North and the Midwest and the West Coast and all the comfortable suburban homes where white folks have been trying to escape the question for 45 years)to do so.  Its clear that what Dean meant was "rednecks" both Southern and not Southern (plenty of pick-up driving, cf decal wearing white folk who vote R in his part of the country, the rust belt and the mountain west.) so I wish he'd just said that, then clarifed it with a context that demonstrated he understands how bloody complicated this all is.  His trying to simplify it is what got him into trouble, and claiming moral high ground over overt racism in a country that still functions with racial structures to this day is both condescending and a little disingenuous.  That's the problem the Democratic party has in the South, but with folks like me on the left, too.

Actually, I do believe that.  People don't follow Dean's speeches as closely as you guys do.  I'd never heard the line before and it was stupid/foolish/condescending in that presentation.  I'm told, however, by those of you who do follow the speeches more closely, that he normally contextualizes the line in a way he didn't this time, which made it more offensive.  In that case, an emotional reaction (which Edwards' clearly was, I don't think he's that good of an actor, frankly) is plausible.  

Its not plausible to someone who has followed the Dean campaign for a long time, is used to the remark and who agrees with it, that it might offend (even if heard before) given the way it was presented that night.  But it certainly is plausible to other people.  

That's the issue.  

The other issue is a bigger one, that I outlined above, both Edwards and Sharptons "responses" are much more than politics at play, they represent two different threads of what it wrapped up in the issue.  And its important that those threads be unwound and examined.  

I don't look at these things as simply about the election, the way most folks here do, that enables me, sometimes to see some things that often get overlooked in the shuffle to elevate and eliminate candidates.

My point is simply that alternative explanations/understandings are in fact plausible.  And one doesn't have to "twist" in order to see them. The truth isn't always clear cut.  

No, this is where I disagree with everybody on this thread, and probably on this site.  He is emphatically NOT attacking it head-on.  He is speaking about it less euphemistically than it is usually spoken about, but its not head-on.  Talking about economic issues eclipsing racial issues doesn't take up the subject head-on at all, its a diversionary tactic to make it be about something else because it is far too difficult to do it the right way.  

While I applaud Dean's instincts to take up the issue, I blame him for doing it sloppily and half-heartedly.  He's doing it in a way that is comfortable for his non-Southern, non-poor, primarily white base.  That's not dealing with anything head-on.  The fallacy that Dean's approach has (and that many here share, it seems) is that racial issues and economic issues are AT ODDS with one another, rather than seeing the ways they work together.  Dean seems to be saying the racism would fade away if people just acted in their economic interests, without any attention to how the economic interests are still working in decidedly racialized ways.  

Issues about the South and race are far more complex than "the South is filled with resentful white racists".  It is, but the way their r esentful white racism works is on several levels at one time.  His attempt is not head-on at all, because it refuses to acknowledge and understand how this works.  Otherwise he'd have developed a different approach.

I don't agree with Julia that these folks are "hopeless".  I do agree that we waste time focusing on them.  I don't agree with Dean supporters that Dean is not pandering.  He is, but in ways no body wants to see, because it hits way too close to home. And I don't agree that he is cutting through BS.  I would grant you that his intentions are well placed, but I fear (and the reason it makes me so angry) is that with his not very thoughtful blundering and rather dangerous simplifications he will take the discussion down a path that makes it even harder than it is now to have the kind of difficult but necessary, "head-on" discussions we really need to have.  

The only public person I've ever heard in the mainstream of US politics who has taken a head-on attack to this issue is Lani Guinier. It just doesn't happen very much, and perhaps Howard Dean is the person to begin the process, but if so, he'd better get a much more sophisticated understanding of what he is talking about in order to facilitate and negotiate the varying threads and the contradictory interests at play.