I attended one of the local Dean meetups at a library in Charlottesville, VA this past week; in addition to writing letters, the big event was going to be our participation in a shared conference call with Dr. Dean and other meetups taking place in VA, NC, SC, and GA, thanks to a gentleman whose cell phone had a speaker.
After about fifteen minutes of working to get the feedback static to a minimum, the Dr. came on and gave a gracious speech thanking us for our hard work in the South, and stressing that his message of "jobs, health care, and education" will be able to beat Bush. It was nice to hear him, but what got to me was when he opened up the conference to questions...
Most of the questions were strategy-based ("What are you going to do to win SC?" "How will you reach out to African-American voters?") but our own Meetup member who owned the cellphone asked (my paraphrase) "How should we respond to charges you're hiding something in your Vermont records?"
I won't try to type Dr. Dean's answer verbatim, I remember it being satisfying to me but wishing it were more soundbitey (SOP, Bush hasn't made his records public despite the spin). After he got off the phone, though, what impressed me the most was his willingness to engage everyone, and for all the talk of Dean supporters drinking Kool-Aid, I was thinking the poor guy doesn't even get a break from people that LIKED him. It reaffirmed to me what makes Dean different as a candidate (obviously) but I can't help but think that if he does emerge as the nominee, he's going to be more battle-tested than some doubters believe. Are we SURE we don't want this guy as the standard-bearer for the Democratic party?
Hopefully, this won't be considered just another Dean-loving post from a Deaniac, I thought the "behind-the-scenes" view made it worthwhile...
BTW, SC voters can write letters to Dean here.
