Paraphrased from tensor's post on dKos:

A synopsis of the media's relation with the Howard Dean campaign this past year:

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Hey, a new interesting fresh face!

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Why is this guy so angry?

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Why is this angry guy attracting a following? this must be some kind of a hippie-internet cult.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes and nobody is saying nothing!

Media: Gee, an outsider; the Democratic establishment must hate him.

Howard Dean: The emperor is naked!

Media: Waffling flip-flopper first he says no "clothes" now he says "naked"!!

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: This is a one note campaign that's peaked; an anti-Dean with tons of experience will emerge to take him down.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: This angry outsider just broke fundraising records. He seems to have some magic online appeal for flaky white nudists on the internet.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: All the other candidates say that Dean is unelectable because. while the emperor lied about having clothes, screaming that the emperor has no clothes proves that they were right in saying that "while the emperor lied about having clothes", that this vindicates saying that the emperor's clothes are the right sort of clothes to wear.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: That angry guy keeps breaking fundraising records from these internet nudists and now all the other candidates say that the emperors cloths are miserable failures, and horrible clothes, that the clothes are wrong, that the clothes are the worst clothes in history. They also say that the angry guy once in effect said that people need to take away clothes from old people because... well... he was telling them it would be better to not spend their grandchildren's trust fund on $5000 pairs of pajama's.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Well, as governor, Dean once went swimming wearing only a swimming trunk; he's also been known to have taken showers, without any clothes and he has the problem of shooting from the hip about people having no clothes! What a hypocrite!

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Well, heck, he'll lose in a landslide in the general because almost a year before the election, most people think the emperor has clothes and will react poorly to being told the emperor has no clothes since people talk about how nice and personally appealing the emperor is in his clothes.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Hey look over there at Michael Jackson accusing Kobe Bryant of forcing him to eat tainted beef that probably came from old Europe.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Wow, he won! he's a genius! we knew it all along; but he's gonna have problems governing...

“if you truly believe that if I had been President, we would be at war in Iraq right now, then you shouldn’t vote for me.” - John Kerry, December 5th, 2003

So... according to his own words if we could have voted Kerry into the Presidency in 2000, we would not be at war in Iraq.

Yet... according to Joe Lieberman's line of thinking, Saddam would still be in power if Kerry were President. Welcome to the circular firing squad of the Democratic party.

Let's look some more at Kerry's words from Dec 5th, 2003:

"The way Powell, Eagleberger, Scowcroft, and the others were talking at the time," continued Kerry, "I felt confident that Bush would work with the international community. I took the President at his word. We were told that any course would lead through the United Nations, and that war would be an absolute last resort. Many people I am close with, both Democrats and Republicans, who are also close to Bush told me unequivocally that no decisions had been made about the course of action. Bush hadn't yet been hijacked by Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney and that whole crew. Did I think Bush was going to charge unilaterally into war? No. Did I think he would make such an incredible mess of the situation? No. Am I angry about it? You're God damned right I am. I chose to believe the President of the United States. That was a terrible mistake."

Those are Kerry's words from the media invitation to Al Franken's living room round table, shortly before Saddam's capture a couple of weeks ago. So back then the war was a "terrible mistake" yet when Saddam was captured last Sunday, Kerry turned around and attacked Howard Dean and crowed that Saddam's capture validated his 2002 vote for the congressional resolution authorizing the war. That is a last straw showing mendacity and pathetic, abject political gaming on a grand scale... and wholly useless ploy. It is why Kerry deserves to be shown the door in his bid for President.

Kerry's words about Saddam's capture and his attacking Dean will be used by the GOP in talking points and attack ads if Dean gets the nomination and would also be used to make Kerry completely neutered and inept at pushing any foreign policy creds he might have built up over the years (even if by some miracle Kerry gets his campaign on track). Kerry has sunk to being a low, low man... and a sad political hack by betraying his principles and attacking others like Dean and Clark who were right on this critical issue when he (Kerry) was not. It is a shame because until the disastrous betrayal of his own record and positions (and by extension us) he had been a principled, strong advocate for progressive and liberal causes.

What is most telling is how Kerry, Lieberman, Gephardt, the DLC leadership crowd, all proclaimed Saddam's capture a "vindication" of the four candidates "who took the politically difficult course of supporting military action to topple the tyrant". So why are these same people not calling into question Clark's position on the wrongness of the war and his foreign policy judgment since he, like Dean opposed the war, would have opposed the resolution and still think it is distraction from the real security threats our nation face, plus is a tragic misuse of our military assets and most critically, our military personal?

Because these people refuse to get on the ABB (Anybody But Bush) ship and instead continually go for the politically expedient in attacking fellow dems who have not wavered on their principled and sound positions regarding the issue of Iraq, they are destoprying ANY Democratic Party chances of gaining control of any branch of government, in particular the executive branch.

Not sure how Kerry can do it, but I hope one day he can redeem himself. His continued rudderless, misguided and damaging campaign for the nomination, where his foundering aircraft carrier of a candidacy is busy ramming into the docks of both the party and other of other candidates like Clark, and in particular Dean, is a disgrace and only makes a possible redemption that much harder.

What a shame, what a disgrace.

Interesting Times has a pledge to be taken by all those who are for Anybody-But-Bush. Read it, take it, link to it, pass it on.

We hold this truth to be self-evident:

Having George W. Bush as President has been and will continue to be a disaster.

We will not let our partisanship towards any particular candidate for President cause us to lose sight of this basic truth. As such, we pledge ourselves not to become enablers of any campaign designed to divide us in our struggle to remove Bush from power. I pledge that no more will we be:

Tools of those who would disrupt the Anybody-But-Bush movement.

Partisans who would rather bring down the other guy's candidate then find reason to elevate our own.

Dupes who will automatically assume that anything negative about the other guy's candidate is more likely to be true than the negative things said about our guy.

Fools who lose sight of the ultimate goal: the defeat of George W. Bush on November 2nd, 2004.

We will uphold this pledge to the best of our ability.

We will encourage others to do the same.

This we do solemnly swear.

Mitchell Gore

Added a new piece which lambasts the GOP doublespeak. It is a rather sobering one, and can be a bit unsettling (as it should given the stakes involved).



This is one of a series in the "Understanding the Republicans in 2004" campaign. I have quite already in the bag and ready to upload. I have some more HTML coding to do to get them up, but am almost there. You can see the small thumbnail previews of them here.

I hope to get them uploaded for public use tomorrow as time permits. I would have done it tonight, but it was one of our kids birthdays tonight so we had a nice dinner out and we put lights on the tree. So it's "sleepy time" for me.

Love the depth and breadth of email like this ones below...

From: Steven8788@aol.com
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 01:22:16-0500 (EST)
To: lestatdelc@mac.com
Subject: your a loser like howard dean

That's it. That's the entire message... just a subject line insult. You know there troglodytes are out when that is all they can muster. Bemusing non-the-less.

Well, if anyone have been trying to access the design portion of the site these past few days, you may have noticed that I was negligent in keeping my hosting bills paid, and I was also in the throws of reworking the site to make it easier to add new stuff to the site without having to re-do so many parts with each addition. Definitely the down-side of hand-coding web pages.

I am in process still of updating the site to a frames version (which will make it easier for me to add new pages). This is not the final form of this site though, as there are some limitations in the frames approach, and I want to eventually get it all into a comparable Deanspace implementation. This will allow better capacity to disseminate content as Deanspace grows and gets better interconnected as the Dean netroots grows.

The main advantage of the admittedly limited frames implementation, is the menu on the left side of the design download part of the site. I have added a "what's new" page, and made the menus collapsable (one level at least).

Anyway, I have added several new pieces, notably two new ones to the "Re-Select Bu$h" campaign, and a Join Generation Dean flyer that was done by request. I have several more pieces in the GOP Up is Downism campaign, which I want to hurry up and get the site re-vamp stuff out of the way so I can upload them.

So, hope I have not dampened interest in people using this site by my clumsy hosting issues and lack of updates over the past month or so. But getting back into the game again and re-joining the fight. Speaking truth to power, six degrees at a time.

Dean gets attacked in TV ads from the left by Lieberman and by a progressive group over guns. While Lieberman's is reprehensible since it is is repeating the lame GOP attack rule-book of lurid innuendo of the common practice of governors sealing records for upwards of 10 years, it is the gun attack which I think is relevant to the general election and the more interesting one.

According to an article in the Guardian UK (why oh why do I tend to find British publications get more real news about American politics?) Dean is going to be attacked in TV ads by Lieberman, and by a progressive advocacy group over guns. I think the gun issue is in the end the more interesting one. The key grafs are here:

On Friday, an organization called Americans for Jobs, Healthcare and Progressive Values began running an ad that says both Dean and President Bush received the National Rifle Association's highest marks for their stances on gun policies.

The group is spending about $230,000 to run the ad for a week, a fairly moderate buy in Iowa.

The ad says, "In Vermont, Dean was endorsed eight times by the National Rifle Association. And Dean got an 'A' rating from the NRA because he joined them in opposing commonsense gun safety laws. So if you thought Howard Dean had a progressive record, check the facts and, please, think again."

Tim Raftis, the group's president, said the organization is not affiliated with any of the Democrats seeking the nomination. Raftis was the campaign manager for Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin's unsuccessful presidential bid in 1992. Harkin has not endorsed in the Democratic primary.

He said the ad singles out Dean because "this is information we feel it is important for voters to consider.'' He said the group may air ads about other candidates as well.

Now, it seems to me that this sort of attack actually helps Dean's position in the general election. I say that because having this sort of attention thrown (from "the left") onto Dean's moderate gun position will go a long way into defusing attacks from the NRA, and more than likely keeping them from forming.

It cannot be understated what impact the NRA had in key "swing states" by campaigning and fund-raising HARD for Bush. From "Freedom First" to "Sportsmen for Bush" bumper-stickers to coordinated rallies and fund-raising events from the NRA to help Bush's candidacy.

As was pointed out in previous discussions here on dKos, I think that Dean's gun position will make him an untenable NRA "boogeyman" with which the NRA can or will be able to openly rally around Bush in 2004.

While Clark holds similar sounding views on gun control issues, I think that the NRA's previous ratings of Dean, while an anathema to some on "the left" and in progressive circles, it will be more than enough to neuter any NRA "call to arms" (pun noted) since their previous ratings will be VERY ripe weapons for disarming and actually hurting the NRAs standing with its own membership.

It would put the NRA in the unenviable position of potentially facing the "where you lying then or now" sort of counterattack should they foolishly be gung-ho in running opposition rallies against Dean and/or rallies for Bush.

I simply don't see how Dean's gun rights position and NRA rating can be parlayed effectively by the NRA into any meaningful opposition to Dean's candidacy over gun issues, the way it was against Gore in 2000. This takes a "deal breaker" issue (guns) off the table for many rural states.

Couple this with Dean's record for land conservation, and rural policy positions and experience as being Gov. of Vermont, I think puts states into play in the West, Northwest, and Southwest, not to mention key swing states like WV and TN that were lost in 2000.