February 07, 2005

• Question: Someone told me that Dean said Bush knew of the Sept. 11 attacks beforehand and did nothing to stop it, i.e. conspiracy. Is this a talk-radio misquote of the "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S." memo, or something more direct?
• Perhaps he read this.
• I can't remember the entire quote nor the context (I was in Guatemala at the time reading a local newspaper) but it wasn't that anyone misquoted him so much as he being oblique about his statement... basically leaving him open to either cheers or jeers from the respective sides. And, for the record, I love Dean. Gotta love a guy who walks out on stage during stumpspeeches with rolled up sleeves, wielding a baseball bat. I mean, you know, aside from all his policy issues and stuff like that.
• Dean was taken out of context and misquoted. He said there were a lot of crazy theories out there, one of which was that Bush knew, but he didn't believe them. Of course his aim in even bringing it up may have been nefarious (depending on your p.o.v.), but he certainly did not say he believed Bush knew. In fact, he pretty explicitly said he didn't believe that rumor. He just acknowledged that the rumor was out there.
• Yeah I think he implied that we should investigate whether Bush knew, or something like that... I was a big Dean supporter but maybe he did put his foot in his mouth a bit for a presidental candidate. I still think he couldn't have done worse than Kerry. And I hope he can bring a spine back to the Democratic Party. Maybe this last election was the death knell for the idea that you win an election by trying to make yourself as much like your opponent as possible and apologizing for who you really are. The more I think about it, the more blame I put for the current situation not on Bush, but on the craven cowardice of the democrats in Congress. "All it takes for evil to occur is for good men to stand by and do nothing," as someone once said. Not that Lieberman is a good man, but the lack of any real opposition has put us where we are..
• Can anyone point me to the quote in question? I'd like to check it out and report back to the well-meaning-but-getting-sucked-in-by-talk-radio friend . .. And yes, anything might be a good strategy to take at this point for the DNC
• Strange that this is such news. How many people know who the DNC chairs of the past have been? How much power do they really have?
• You know, I'm open to a three-legged udderless cow running the party at this point. Couldn't make things any worse. Change is what's needed.
• What MCT said. I mean: "Yup. *ptui!*"
• Is the chair of the DNC actually eligible to run, or are the jobs mutually exclusive - or is the chair often also a presidential candidate? /clueless
• bernockle: The DNC have enormous power to sway who gets through the primaries. Clinton, Gore, and Kerry were all the DNC picks, and the DNC did their best to actively undermine Dean's candidacy. They were also responsible for Gore's oh-so-successful strategy of adopting Republican cultural was catch phrases via Lieberman and the strategy of talking down Clinton.
• Can anyone point me to the quote in question? I'm pretty sure this is the quote that started it all, from Diane Rehm's show on NPR:

  Caller: Once we get you in the White House, would you please make sure that there is a thorough investigation of 9/11 and not stonewalling? Howard Dean: Yes there is a report which the president is suppressing evidence for, which is a thorough investigation of 9/11. Diane Rehm: Why do you think he is suppressing that report? Howard Dean: I don’t know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I’ve heard so far—which is nothing more than a theory, it can’t be proved—is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now who knows what the real situation is? But the trouble is, by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kind of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and eventually, they get repeated as fact. So I think the president is taking a great risk by suppressing the key information that needs to go to the Kean Commission.

• yeah, what rogerd said. Tracicle, I assume they cannot run although I'm not an expert. The chairman helps determine the party's platform, it other words I guess they make up a set of values and then try to encourage people to pick a candidate that matches those values. I think. Basically, as roger says, its a job with little public visibility and huge power behind the scenes. The fact that Dean would get it does seem to signal a sesmic shift in the Party, which has been moving steadily to the right for far too long... I am psyched because I have kept his bumper sticker on my car lo these many months because I actually believed in the man. I never strongly considered getting a Kerry sticker. That right there tells you why the election went the way it did.
• So then it would follow that Dean is being selected at the behest of a leading contender for 2008 who has money to throw around right now to get Dean in there.
• Getting Dean in is a nice start. I'm not convinced it signifies a shift back to the left, as Howie did a pretty good job of straddling the political centre as gov, but at least it shows that having a discernable personality is no longer a defect among Dems. There's also a nice vindication factor for those of us who opposed the war from the start -- Kerry's explanations for his vote of support were perfectly logical, however convoluted, but the fact is that the Dems' man of choice was, at best, a tepid supporter, or at worst, co-opted. There was only one contender who had the vision and courage to say no, and it's good that that man of prescience now has an effective role to play.
• Speaking as a former low-level member of the headquarters policy staff of the Dean presidential campaign, the quote that Hlewagast pulled is correct, and the root of the misrepresentation that was widely disseminated on talk radio.
• All the Republican pundits advised against him, so he's gotta be good.
• Tip o' the Hat to the ole Deanster, and let's hope we start seeing dems grow a pair. It seems like these days they've shrunk to the size of small ball-bearings . . .
• Overall I'd agree mk1gti but you gotta admit the Boxer revolution Re: Condolezza and the sit-down strike during the SOTU was a good sign too. Thanks to Hlewagast and piro. At the risk of being a jerk, do either of you have a URL? gratsi in advance.
• Joe Lieberman isn't happy about Dean becoming the DNC Chairman. Everyone yawns and moves on to the next comment.
• a bold assertion, Sully. What, pray, is your source? not that it's not easily conceivable that one of the more concillatory and conservative of the Dems wouldn't dig Dean driving the bus
• a bold assertion, Sully. What, pray, is your source? Here:

  Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who also unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination last year, said Dean "wasn't my first choice. I felt we needed a bridge-builder at this point. But I will respect whatever decision the DNC makes. And if it's Howard, I'll go along."

  I certainly wouldn't call Lieberman's statement a ringing endorsement.
• I certainly wouldn't call Lieberman's statement a ringing endorsement. Lieberman is barely a Democrat, so I'd consider this a good thing...
• Fuck Joe Lieberman.
• Yeah, Lieberman is a stooge for the right. Did you see him and Bush kissing before the SotU address? (Not kidding.)
• ...Howie did a pretty good job of straddling the political centre as gov... Whoa! Careful with the spelling there Capt. Renault. The last thing the Dems need now to be smeared with the taint of Englishness, some GOP troublemakers might start pelting liberals with fish and chips.
• petebest, you can listen to the actual program here. Only available in Real format, unfortunately. Can't find a transcript, but you could google the text of it, I suppose.
• waitingtoderail pointed to a book called:"Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, by Michael C. Ruppert, Catherine Austin Fitts" Neither our public library nor the university one have that book, a fact that I think is evidence of a plot. And middleclasstool, why halfstep? The baby's clearly drowned already, so why keep the tub around?
• Sounds like the response to the Republican drift rightward is to drift further left. Bad news for America.
• I don't know if there's a rule that says the head of the DNC can't run for President, but Dean basically promised not to run if he got the DNC job. Many conservative Dems (Republican-lite Dems?) supported Dean for the DNC gig simply to keep him from running, from what I've been reading lately. I like Dean, generally, and I hope he gives the donkey party its balls back.
• eh... ok, here I thought I understood the players pretty well, but then you go and throw a cricket rule at me. an outside-Dean-googly-what? Has he credibility to lend? (just asking, honest)
• What drjimmy said. In those exact words. Behemoth Cat, do you really think the Dem's correct response is to become the RepubLite Party? Especially when a Democratic Party with vision and a strongly articulated message might have the ability to absolutely pound the Bushies on how they're fucking up the country, which is what Kerry should have done but was unable to. The RepubLite Party strategy is categorically NOT working. See 2000, 2004.
• drift further left Huh? Do you know where Dean stands on the issues, or are you just going off of where other people say he stands on the issues? Dean is not as left as people make him out to be.
• Strange that this is such news. How many people know who the DNC chairs of the past have been? How much power do they really have? This is news because it's...news. This is a strong signal that regular people are going to be more aware of and more involved in the dem party. Regular people are making it a big deal, and the fact that they're so interested makes it a big deal. It's very meta, kind of hard to explain without sounding a little stupid. And Behemoth Cat: The Dems are not going farther to the left. The opposite if anything. A significant portion of the party strongly supports fiscal conservatism/responsibility and civil liberties. Pre-Reagan, these things were considered Republican values, while the Dems were the ones who would raise taxes and spend all the government's money. How are the Dems going farther to the left by electing Dean? Because he supports gay rights (as the first candidate to condone civil unions)? Please, Behemoth Cat, share with us some evidence to support your statement, or admit that you don't know what you're talking about and were just blindly repeating what you heard on the tee-vee. How does electing Dean as the chair make us all evil ultra-liberals, and how is providing an alternative to the Republicans a bad thing for America? Would the nation be better served by elections between candidates from two almost-identical parties? Why have elections at all? :)
• It's a little late, but *screw Joe Lieberman and his 'bridge-building'*. The right has been burning bridges for years. It's not our job to replace what's been destroyed by them. It's *their* job. I say burn *more* bridges, isolate them on their own little island and make'em starve! (metaphorically, of course).
• Strange that this is such news. Yes, apologies for the NewsFilter post, but I did think it was interesting, given the buzz around Dean. Although I probably agree with the spirit of burning bridges, I think the "bridge building" comment works both ways; don't be complicit, but don't close the door either. It can't be as black-or-white as that anyway. I hope Dean will revitalize the Dems by raising money and geting local politics moving toward Democratic platforms again.
• Most Americans don't think in right/left terms. They vote for the personality they like best. This changes nothing.
• Did you see him and Bush kissing before the SotU address? Was it a "come give your aunt Gertrude a kiss"-kiss or an "I want to lick your pancreas"-kiss? Most Americans don't think in right/left terms. They vote for the personality they like best Which makes it difficult to understand nominating someone who doesn't have a personality (ke-cough-erry).
• Don't apologize, petebest. This is an excellent FPP, as is evidenced by the conversation it's provoked.
• Sorry there, Spooky. I'll be more careful about my pinko Canadian spelling.
• I did not think that it was not a good post. I found it strange that the story has a lot of national exposure. I don't find it strange that it is here. Just has hawthornewingo said, the conversation proves the worthiness of the post (yikes -- that sounds dangerously like "the end determines the means," which I completely disagree with).
• Most Americans don't think in right/left terms. They vote for the personality they like best. That's a nice generalization you've got there. It's also the dumbest thing I've read on the internet in a pretty long time. Well...maybe about a week. Ok 3 days.
• 3 clicks ago?
• Most Americans don't think in right/left terms. They vote for the personality they like best. That's a nice generalization you've got there. It's also the dumbest thing I've read on the internet in a pretty long time. Maybe; maybe not (from a recent New Yorker article): Skepticism about the competence of the masses to govern themselves is as old as mass self-government. Even so, when that competence began to be measured statistically, around the end of the Second World War, the numbers startled almost everyone. The data were interpreted most powerfully by the political scientist Philip Converse, in an article on "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,"� published in 1964. Forty years later, Converse's conclusions are still the bones at which the science of voting behavior picks. Converse claimed that only around ten per cent of the public has what can be called, even generously, a political belief system. He named these people "ideologues," by which he meant not that they are fanatics but that they have a reasonable grasp of "what goes with what”of how a set of opinions adds up to a coherent political philosophy. Non-ideologues may use terms like "liberal" and "conservative," but Converse thought that they basically don't know what they're talking about, and that their beliefs are characterized by what he termed a lack of constraint�: they can't see how one opinion (that taxes should be lower, for example) logically ought to rule out other opinions (such as the belief that there should be more government programs). About forty-two per cent of voters, according to Converse's interpretation of surveys of the 1956 electorate, vote on the basis not of ideology but of perceived self-interest. The rest form political preferences either from their sense of whether times are good or bad (about twenty-five per cent) or from factors that have no discernible issue content whatever. Converse put twenty-two per cent of the electorate in this last category. In other words, about twice as many people have no political views as have a coherent political belief system.
• Dean will spend time in mostly conservative areas
• "By any means necessary" . . . strong words. well okay he said " . . . not afraid to use any means to get there"
• What people like Lieberman don't understand is that the Democratic Chairman is suppose to be partisan. It's like saying that Karl Rove should reach out to Democrats more. That's not Rove's job. Dean's job is too get the state party systems organized (they are a mess in the South) raise money and attack the admistration so elected Democrats can ride the middle. Clinton was at the center when James Carville was ripping Gingrich and Dole apart. Should Carville have reached out to those guys?
• so true Sully. I like that about Dean, although it might make him un-electable as President it should kick the ass party in the @#$%! ass. and if I had any chutzpah I'd be rooting through DNC websites for some harbinger of said ass-kickin's in the works
• "A raving, sinister, demagogic nutbag...I and a few other people saw that he should be destroyed."
• Howard Dean, vindicated