I was wondering what speech those of you inclined to think about such things might have had the Rev. Gov. Dr. Dean give Tues night, given the clarity of hindsight, if you had been holding the control pad. As the title of this, my first entry implies, i'm aware that this endeavor has the potential to verge into the justifiably shadowy world of fan fiction.
Aw, c'mon; it's not that queer: Slate's Chatterbox column already gave it a shot, with respect to the Diane Sawyer interview last night; and libertarian/conservative Hugh Hewitt did some good advance fantasy debating on Dean's behalf as well.
My attempt: He should've acknowledged the disappointment and attributed it to everyone's playing pundit, rather than voter. Iowans, we were being told at least the day in advance of the caucuses, were more concerned with electability than issues, and were increasingly focused on the perception that Dean was unelectable. Dean should've called the media out on being maniacally obsessed with not just the horse-race aspect of the primaries, but with baseless prognostication. He should've ended the speech by announcing [and here is where I'll switch (roughly) into his manly, road-worn, gravelly voice] how we'll combat the media echo chamber and instill in primary-goers the faith that not only can this campaign win back the whitehouse, but this is the only campaign that can stand toe-to-toe against George W. Bush in the general election. Starting right now, we're putting a new $x million dollar bat up on deanforamerica.com. So I'm going to make a special, personal request to each one of my supporters out there. I'm asking everyone within the sound of my very hoarse voice to either get on our website or call 1-800-dean-4-us, and give whatever you can, $10 or $100, to this effort, join this revolution, because it's the only way we're going to take back our country.</first person> He certainly could then have gone through the litany of states he's going to win, and even done the scream, because he would've provided the context for it.
