For anyone interested, here's the take on the opening of last night's Rock The Vote forum as featured on
Dan Conley's Journal by the erstwhile keeper of
The Dean Blog.
UPDATE: Okay, now that I've seen the news coverage and read the CNN transcript, I realize that I completely missed the story and the fireworks. These debates are always an eye of the beholder phenomenon, but I think the Sharpton-Edwards tag team was piece of tactical genius by those guys. Sharpton attacks from the black point of view, Edwards has the back of the sick-of-the-Hee-Haw slurs Southern whites.
No one should expect me to give fair treatment to Dean in this encounter because I think he's 100 percent wrong on the matter and I think the only people who agree with him are the Deaniacs, who would probably defend Dean if he declared himself Pope tomorrow, and the editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal who are just salivating for a Bush-Dean matchup. Dean ended up getting some applause at the end for bringing up his Civil Unions bill. Okay, minor point in his favor. But no one's claiming Dean's a bigot, we're claiming he's an arrogant ... I don't want to say it but it rhymes with trick.
It's worth acknowledging right off the top that Dan Conley is about as
hostile as anyone could possibly get toward the prospect of Dean's nomination, and equally
condemning of the Confederate flag rhetoric in particular. Having noted all that, I'm posting this as an additional perspective - whether for debate on the merits (if not lack thereof) or for indifferent dismissal as the dKos readers see fit..
In any event, this Dan Conley entry also includes some interesting reader comments, from which I'll excerpt the following:
First, let me say I didn't start reading you til this week, so I'm not sure where you were with Dean and how you ended up where you are now, but I'm beginning to feel like I'm following your prints in the snow...
You really need to catch video of the exchange on the flag, it's the only way to really judge what happened.
I started out on the Dean wagon early, gave him money twice and went to the meetups. I love what he's doing. No one wants him to do better than I do. But after tonite's performance (and most of the other debates as well, I'm afraid) he has me worried.
I honestly believe it's too early to use words like "unelectable", but he's making the case against himself every time out.
Dean is blowing it big time. If he can't handle heat for misstatements / bad statements from fellow Dems without looking stubborn, testy and defensive, he is going to look really bad when he's attacked by the Bush machine.
He was given a perfect opportunity to lay this Confederate flag issue to rest right off the bat. You and many others have written about how to handle the moment for days, yet somehow he ends up WAY worse off than he was before.
I was talking to my wife today about how Clinton came onto MTV and really came across great. No one is really reaching that level of smoothness, Clark and/or Edwards might get closest, but Dean is furthest from it. One would expect him to have a crowd like this eating out of his hand, but I'm afraid he always ends up looking antagonistic. It plays on the stump to your true believers but I think it will turn too many people off.
Posted by: Mr Furious at November 5, 2003 02:33 AM
Now, I don't pretend that I by and large don't agree with the above commentaries, because I do and I'm posting them for that very reason. However, I'm basically attempting to return to this same question of just how damaging this could be for Dean's campaign. In particular, I'm interested in whether any Dean supporters (either avid, Kool-Aid types or marginal, casual fans) have reconsidered their perspective on Dean due to this issue.
In other words, I'm interested in personal viewpoints more so than conjecture about how this will play to the broader electorate (though those are welcome as well).
That's all! Please everyone take the following poll!