The darkest hour is just before the dawn.
On the morning after New Hampshire, the "Anybody But Kerry" crowd is forming a long line out the door that could snake around the country and all the way to California.
And Howard Dean --- who has sufficiently recovered from "The Scream" with a solid second in NH --- will be their candidate.
Especially if John Kerry stumbles along the way. And badly.
We need to be ready for that distinct possibility.
Don't get me wrong. I'll support Kerry if he's the eventual nominee in the general election, if only because the alternative is absolute anathema.
But this race is far from over.
If there was ever a time to stand up for the good doctor, to stand up for yourself, to "stand up for America," --- that time is NOW.
"The only way that we're going to beat George Bush is to say what we mean, to stand up for who we are, to lift up a Democratic agenda against the Republican agenda because if you do that the Democratic agenda wins every time.
We want our country back!
I am tired of being divided!
I don't want to listen to the fundamentalist preachers anymore!
I want America to look like America!
Where we are all included, hand in hand...
Together - black and white, gay and straight, man and woman...
Stand up for America,
Stand up for America,
STAND UP for America!"
--- Gov. Howard Dean, speech to the California Democratic Party state convention (March 15, 2003)
As folkbum wrote recently, "do you want to vote for someone who has adopted Dean's rhetoric and passion, or do you want to vote for Howard Dean?"
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