Armando queries:
'Just like President Bush, Howard Dean has effectively undermined campaign finance laws for his own personal, opportunistic political advantage,' Murphy said."
Is Mr. Murphy right?
The answer:
Who cares?
It's time that Democrats, liberals, and progressives start playing to win. That means to start playing strategically. We are the party and ideology of hope, while Republicans and the right are the party and ideology of fear. But we have also recently become the party of stupidity. Isn't the
issue (and I use that term lightly) of character how Bush stole the presidency? Or was it just that Democrats and the left didn't do a good enough job making real issues more important? If Democrats hadn't been squabbling over how Clinton, the most successful Democrat in decades, didn't represent the party and had instead been talking about how Republican policy stances hurt most Americans, would Gore have lost? Would there even have been the sort of exodus from the Democratic party to the Green party and Nader that there was?
Today's L.A. Times writes that the only person who will bring down Dean is Dean, an assertion I agree with. And it is the duty of other campaigns to tear him down when appropriate, like that stupid Confederate flag comment. But being the first to opt-out of public financing? Come on, let's not play dumb; we know Kerry's going to do it, and so is Clark. The only people who won't are the one's who can't afford to, like Gephardt, because of poor fundraising trends.
And just because you opt out of public financing doesn't mean you won't fix the system if you're president. I'm pretty sure Kerry, Clark, Dean or whoever realize now that the system needs to be fixed. I'm pretty sure Russ Feingold realizes that, as do all the Campaign Finance Reform advocates. And I'm sure that it will be a long, tough fight to get there that won't happen unless a Democrat wins.
I would like to see Dean vow not to exceed primary limits voluntarily, but strategically, why would he do that if he were faced with a choice: spend past limits and end the primaries as quickly as possible, allowing the party as a whole to focus on the general election and for Dean to build a bigger tent, or prolong the primaries so that his opponents will continue to badger him over stupid issues like this or claim that he support's Newt Gingrich's view of Medicare (he might have before, but he sure as hell doesn't now). So I'm going to be disappointed with Dean, but this isn't the sort of thing that makes him evil. This is that sort of, 'ooooh... Clark can't make up his mind on the hypothetical question of his vote on going to war in Iraq' nonsense. It's politics. People change their minds.
Democrats, Greens, progressives and liberals need to all stop being idiots (or poopie heads). Stop trying to be martyrs, and start playing to win. Stop using 'holier than thou' tactics against Republicans and take a page out of their successful cut-throat playbook. For goodness sake, just win. I think my entire generation is sick and tired of this 'I'm more like JFK than you are' nonsense. Martyrdom feeds no one and degrees of holiness employs no one.