Many of the Howard Dean fans that loiter at DailyKos.com harbor a real dislike for President Bill Clinton because, they say, he triangulated his way to political success in the 90s. That is to say, he ceded progressive values and co-opted right-leaning positions to further his own political ends. In doing so, he drove the party to the right, selling out the progressive base. That is a very popular refrain among the Deaniacs. They know it's true because Ralph Nader told them so. It was Nader's main plank in 2000.
One of the most interesting pathologies of the Dean Delusion (the willful ignorance one adopts when becoming a Deaniac) is the obsessive compulsion that makes them loathe Clinton and love Dean for exactly the same things. Howard Dean is a masta triangulator, abandoning progressive causes whenever they are inconvenient for him. If the Deaniacs had a shred of internal logic or consistency, they would hold Clinton and Dean in equal contempt. The cognitive dissonance necessary for this must give them nasty headaches.
Howard Dean called reporters in Arkansas a couple weeks ago, as Chairman of the DNC, to pitch his vision for the Democratic Party in the south. Here is a fragment of his
remarks:
"I was a governor who balanced eight budgets in a row, which is eight more than the Republicans, and I was a governor who was endorsed every year by the National Rifle Association."
Guns, Dean predicted, would never come up - either pro or con - in his 50-state survey of what the Democratic message should be."
Guns aren't an issue," he said. "If Philadelphia wants gun control, fine. If Alabama doesn't, also fine."
First of all, who cares what Howard Dean did as governor of Vermont? He is speaking for the Democratic Party, not running against other Dems in a primary election. Dean makes it sound as if balancing state budgets is a really rare thing for a Democrat to do and he was one of the few who did it. It is exactly the same line he used in the primaries. If he pats himself on the back any harder he will break his frikkin' arm. And he is doing it at the expense of other Dems. This is not the normal behavior you might expect from a DNC chair. Howie does not seem to realize that it is not all about HIM anymore. His pre-Iowa salad days are long gone.
Dean's abandonment of the progressives on the gun issue and his co-opting of the NRA party line are particularly repugnant. For those who think Dean is right that guns are "not an issue" I present some alarming facts: In 2002 there were 11,789 gun homicides in the United States, nearly 4 time the number killed by terrorists on September 11, 2001. And Howie thinks it is "not an issue?"
During the same period, gun homicides in Great Britain totaled 54. In Australia it was 57. Nineteen in Japan. Across the border in Canada, total gun homicides were 151. Obviously, something is horribly out of whack with American gun policy. This has been a vital, central issue for Democrats and progressives for decades, but Howard Dean has sided with the NRA and declared that it is "not an issue." 11,789 dead Americans in 2002, and Howie yawns.
It also does not seem to be an issue among Dean's sycophants, the Deaniacs. That may be due to the fact that Deaniacs are wealthier, whiter, and older than Democrats. Guns are a more distant threat when viewed from a gated community or a guarded tower in academia. And with only one percent of Deaniacs being black, they lack the perspective of a culture often brutalized by guns and violence. I congratulate the Dean crowd for their affluence and safety, but I am disgusted by their lack of empathy for those not so comfortably situated. Declaring that guns are "not an issue" betrays a rather shocking elitist snobbery. Guns are a gigantic issue for many in the Democratic family.
There is a compelling national interest in saving some of those 11,789 lives. The NRA is delighted that Dean's preference is to slough the whole thing off to the states, which is their strategy to obfuscate the problem. Dean just planted a big wet kiss on some part of Wayne LaPierre's anatomy.
Dean even crows that he was "endorsed every year by the National Rifle Association." Once again, why is Dean flogging his resume while speaking officially for the DNC? He is not running to be governor of Arkansas, so why the heck is Howie mouthing his self-promoting lines from the primaries? Shouldn't he be talking about OTHER Democrats?
Dean was given a favorable rating by the NRA for fighting to allow hunting and trapping in wilderness areas of Vermont. Hunting I can understand, with the argument that many people eat their prey, supplementing their food budget.
But trapping? Nobody eats the animals caught in traps in Vermont. Beavers, muskrats, badgers, bobcats, and the like do not often end up on the dinner table. Instead, the carcasses end up draped across the bony shoulders of vain hags. These furry critters endure a slow, agonizing death with their mangled paw crushed in the grip of a steel-jawed trap so trophy wives can look chic. The NRA lauded Howard Dean for defending this depravity, and he brags about it. One does not need to be an "animal rights whacko" to be offended by this sadism and to be offended that any Democrat would side with the NRA to support it.
Howard Dean has casually conceded the gun debate to the wingnuts, betraying the activism of a couple of generations of Democrats. At the same time he is backpedaling from traditional Democratic positions, Dean is hawking his own qualifications that distinguish him from Democrats. Dean is a triangulating fool, and if the Deaniacs were intellectually honest he would deserve their scorn.