I disagree with a lot of
this article by Steve Perry, but it's an interesting read...
This section really stood out as insightful, despite his lack of faith in Dean overall:
The grand irony in the case of Howard Dean vs. the Democratic Leadership Council is that it's not at all clear that Dean ever seriously meant to take on the Democratic party establishment, or that he will even carry through with the battle. He talked a tough anti-establishment line out of the gate, yes, but that was the smart outsider play, and Dean's candidacy had struck party sultans as a bit of trivia from the start. As governor of Vermont and already as a presidential aspirant, Dean has tended to speak boldly first and tack practically to the right when under fire. It isn't hard to imagine his fashioning a rapprochement with the party elite as his campaign flourished.
If he had been allowed to, that is. But the party blew it. The DNC's controlling junta--the Clinton/McAuliffe New (business) Democrats--consistently underestimated Dean's appeal and treated him with such raw contempt as to make an alliance impossible in the near term. They tried very hard to derail him instead, which is why so many party regulars have labored to breathe life into the listless, late-entry bid by Wesley Clark. (Gore Vidal on Clark: "I don't like these men of great accomplishment who've accomplished nothing, and who mean nothing.") And for what it's worth, the DLC's principal attack hound, Tailgunner Joe Lieberman, has shown no signs of relenting in his verbal assaults. In one of those bits of doublespeak for which Democrats are rightly as cherished as Republicans, Lieberman decreed that Dean's opposition to the war and to Democratic complicity in it proved him a "divisive" force in politics.
What do you think?