So I'm watching CNN this morning, and the little left-right duelling pundit segments are all fighting over whether Dean went "too far" in saying DeLay will probably go to jail, especially when he said Bin Laden should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Gosh, it's the same question that was asked before his MTP interview.
Dean has a terrible time clarifying himself. He has no double-standard on DeLay and Bin Laden. The Bin Laden statement was within the context of defending the point that he should get a trial. DeLay should get a trial, too. Dean could have shown there was no double-standard, but he didn't. He could have said that DeLay and Bin Laden should both have trials, that DeLay and Bin Laden should both be presumed innocent until proven guilty within the context of those trials, but that outside that context we all know DeLay and Bin Laden should both go to jail. On top of that, he could point out that before anyone accuses him of comparing DeLay to Bin Laden, that it was DeLay who compared himself to Bin Laden.
The criticism that Dean gets for his statements is indeed incomparable to what other politicians get for the same sorts of statements, but Dean still leaves himself open for that criticism an awful lot.
And I say this as someone who flew across the country to spend two weeks in Des Moines and one in Manchester volunteering for his campaign.