No more excuses. It's time for Joe Trippi to check his ego at the door and start running a real campaign. The media and the other candidates had Dean's ankles pinned behind his ears for two weeks before the caucuses and not once was there a scream from the campaign. It was almost as though Dean was moaning, Oh, yeah, harder, harder! And in that sense, he looked exactly like Michael Dukakis in '88. ''What would I do to someone raped my wife? Well, just stand there and look stupid, I guess.''
The campaign's only reaction to the constant attacks has been to log on to its blog and shout, ''Oh, look, how terrible, Howard's taking it up the rear-end. Please give us more money.''
A pathetic attempt at preaching to the converted.
This is not how Howard Dean excited so many hundreds of thousands of Americans last year. He inspired us by confronting George Bush and by confronting the Democrats in Washington who were rubber-stamping -- even co-authoring -- the president's ruinous policies.
He wasn't being a weak-kneed liberal; he wasn't buckling and failing to adequately respond to the lies of the right like Al Gore did in 2000; he wasn't falling in and goose-stepping behind Bush with the other Democrats in the run-up to the 2002 elections.
He wasn't getting his ass kicked.
And that's because he was strong enough to say exactly what he believed and confront those who disagreed with him.
But now he can't even confront the Nedra Picklers and Jodi Wilgorens of the world, let alone Fox News and the other networks. Well, guess what? Now Dean looks exactly like the weak-kneed liberal we were all hoping he'd rescue us from because he's letting the media -- the media, for crying out loud -- do him from behind.
You know, journalists aren't part of any conspiracy. Nedra and Karl don't trade Blackberry messages. But they are children of our society, and our society says it's OK to bully Democrats. Just like it's OK to picket Matthew Shepard's funeral and shout ''God hates fags.'' Just like it's OK bypass Congress and give judgeships to racists on MLK Day.
It's OK for Fox to stage ''George Bush'' rallies at a Howard Dean rally and it's OK to tell lies in your news story about Howard Dean because he's not gonna fight back. He's a Democrat! He's a weakling! And our society says we should align with the strong and pick on the weak.
But Democrats don't have to be the weaklings. That's the message Howard Dean delivered to all of last year, and now it's time for him to deliver it to the attack-dog journalists and Joe Lieberman (who, I have no doubt, will pick up right where Richard Gephardt left off and begin crucifying Dean for things he never even did or said; that's the only reason Lieberman is hanging around).
It's time to start returning the fire. This is something the campaign has to do, and it has to do it strongly. It can't merely post a couple URLs on the blog and tell people to join a rapid-response team. The campaign itself has to stand up and say, ''We're Howard Dean and we're not going to take this anymore.''
Where's the fire that used to be in their bellies?