A reply I made to one of cerebrocrat's "Dean v Clark live" diaries yesterday led to a thread that I've found very troubling. Comments I made about the Dean campaign has caused several Dean supporters to not only ask if I had my head on straight - always a valid question - but to question my motives the whole time I've been posting here.
This is from people I take seriously, not BS slingers that I could just zap with a "2" and move on. So they deserve an attempt at a full answer, instead of disjointed bits in thread replies. This will be more personal than analytical, because it is about how my views on the campaign got to where they are now.
I started focusing on the campaign around August, and at that time was leaning Dean. I was always anxious about the baggage Dean carries ("peacenik gay-marriage-supporting effete New Englander"), but he was taking it to Bush and generating some voltage out there. The guy I'd once assumed I'd support - Kerry - wasn't doing either one.
Given a choice of not-perfect options (welcome to the real world!), I'll accept the baggage if the guy has shoulders to carry it. Plus, modern elections do tend to be more base elections than swing-voter elections - though more in the offyears than the presidential years.
Clark jumps in, the Wurlitzer starts tooting madly on all pipes, and I shift to Clark. Obviously they're afraid of this guy, and the guy they're afraid of is the guy I want. The reasons for their fear are pretty obvious. Bush wants to run on all 9/11 all the time, and Clark makes that whole theme dicey for him. More broadly, Clark gives Dems national-security cred we haven't had in my adult lifetime. In wartime, that is fairly important.
Clark has flunked the walk-on-water test, but he's solidified a position just back of Dean in national polls, and second only to Dean in fundraising and grassroots support.
I still ranked Dean my second choice, said so often, and challenged BS attacks on Dean such as the Mediscare thing.
I will still do so. If Clark goes after Dean for busting the caps, that's a BS attack. I won't hold it against my guy's campaign, because campaigns do that stuff (and it's hardly a theme that Bush can ever use). It's still a BS attack, and not something that Kos people need take seriously as a real criticism of Dean.
Still, I have become significantly less confident of Dean's general-election prospects, should he be our nominee. This bothers me, because I should be going the other way, getting more comfort level with a guy who has had a couple of big weeks and is distinctly closer to the nomination. Yet he has slipped behind Gephardt as my second choice - which effectively puts him at the bottom, because only Clark, Gephardt, and Dean are still reasonable-prospect nominees.
So, why have I become more worried about Dean's prospects, thus tougher in my comments about him? Disclaimer that I've become more directly involved with Clarkista guerillas, but I don't think it's just that.
Part of it is accumulating missteps by Dean himself. His hardline position on the tax cuts strikes me as a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the foot. Why not exempt the token middle-class part? It's less philosophically consistant, but way easier to sell.
The Confederate flag thing was also a blunder. Of course the "racist" stuff is sheer crap - Sharpton has shot himself in the foot with an RPG - but in trying to reach out to Southern moderates, Dean turned 'em off instead. The damn rebel flag is going to follow him around like toilet paper stuck to his shoe, no big deal but an embarrassing irritant.
This is small stuff by itself, but it adds up to fairly serious for a candidate who carries some heavy baggage, and will have to shoulder it with style in order to win.
The other thing that bothers me - and what got me in way hot water with people here I respect - is the Dean campaign itself. It has begun to feel to me like not so much a means to an end (getting a guy elected) as an end in itself, a movement to transform American politics by its sheer existence and energy.
So, what's wrong with that? Nothing, if it puts Dean in the White House. I would rather have Clark as president as well as candidate, but jeez - if Bush calls Howard Dean next Nov 2 to blubber his concession, I'll be as delirious with joy as anyone.
I'm also aware of the theory of "materiality" that Chris Bowers put out, and agree entirely with its long-term importance. But you gotta win the election first. The other idea Chris floated - Jesse Jackson, Jr. as VP nom - is one of the things that scared me. Partly that a sharp, serious guy could even come up with something so off the wall, partly because the idea got a lot of support from other serious-people Dean supporters.
This isn't the place to argue the merits of the JJJr proposal, but it strikes me as taking political courage to something of an extreme. It looks superficially like a shameless pander to the black vote, and is made to order for the standard GOP tactic of painting the entire Democratic Party as a bunch of "special interest" pressure groups, AKA Those Other People.
Yeah, it's a lie, and the exact opposite of the Dean campaign's intent, but in politics the truth and $5 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Boys and girls, this is a country that loves reality TV shows, and where a guy who's presided over a flatlined economy and a totally unnecessary clusterfuck of a war runs ahead of every one of our candidates (Clark included). Lofty values and passionate idealism need not apply, unless they've also got some zing that will appeal to a dreadfully apathetic and fatalistic public.
I no longer see where that zing is in the Dean campaign. I think the zing is supposed to be in the energy of the campaign itself - and there's no doubt of the energy - but I think it's getting to the point of being so evangelical that it will turn off more people than it energizes.
The Dean campaign begins to look more and more like those gallant, passionate campaigns that always end up losing. Yeah, that's the same tired old electability thing ... but that thing has hung over Dean since he became a serious contender, and it isn't going away. It isn't something the DLC or K Street people invented; a lot of grassroots Dems have the same worry.
I haven't done much to explain it here, but the Dean people need to understand it and put it to rest. If they don't, and he's the nominee, we could all end up in a world of hurt next fall.
-- Rick Robinson