… and further, their fear is evident in every complaint they make about him. For example, from this thread:
This is prime stuff, and this sort of screeching can be heard from every conservative talk show host or pundit from sea to shining sea. It’s almost like a script they’re reading from at this point. See, for another example, our perennial favorite Bill O’Reilly’s comments on Dean:
I love this stuff… the conservative line on Dean is consistent these days. Dean is a weak candidate, Dean is unelectable, Dean is an extremist, yadda yadda yadda. Can’t you just smell the fear motivating these words?
And need I remind you that this was the same sort of thing many said about Bush before he was elected? Just replace “liberal” with “conservative” in Shodan’s little temper tantrum above, and you would have heard it often in the 2000 campaign season, from the other side of the political coin. And we all know what happened then…
Tom Tomorrow summed it up well is his last strip of 2003 (published on my birthday even!).
Keep it up, lads! The more you rant and rave about Dean being a weak candidate, the more you reveal your fear that he is not only electable, but that he can give your precious man from Texas a real run for his money. I, for one, am looking forward to it.
And I’m predicting that the conservatives trying so hard to convince us of Dean’s inelectabilty today will be standing gape-jawed and speechless at the election results in November.
Absolutely. As a conservative, I am terrrifed of Dean. Nominate him, and show me how effective he is. Terrify me more. Send me running for cover. Horrify me. Make me scream. Shake the boogyman at me. Please, please don’t scare me so much. I am so afraid.
Please don’t throw me in the briar patch. Please. Please.
Certainly. However, I would say that those people are (at best) ill-informed, and are buying into the propaganda campaign that has already begun against Dean.
Al Sharpton is unelectable. Given Dean’s popularity and fast rise, there are many things you can say about him, but “unelectable” pretty clearly is not one of them. Especially not after the 2000 elections.
They’re scared because Dean is the only one who seems to want to make Bush’s lies about Iraq a major campaign issue. The Bushies don’t want to talk about Iraq unless it’s patriotic glurge. Their response right now is to whine about negative campaigning and that’s ironic coming from a party that villified a man who lost three limbs in Vietnam as unpatriotic and ran campaign ads that showed him in league with with bin Laden and Hussein.
Let’s also not forget Shrub’s own vicious tactics aginst John McCain during the 2000 primaries.
The last thing the GOP wants this elction to be about is a real examination of GWB. An awful lot of people hate Governor Bush. I have a brother-in-law who who works for a private company that does surveys and opinion polls. he does a lot of political polling and he says that the vehemence of those who hate Bush is even more intense than the ant-Clinton hatred of the 90’s.
There is a huge groundswell of anti-Bush resentment out there and Dean is the one who seems most willing to tap into it. This will not be a landslide for Bush no matter how much whistling past the graveyard you hear from GOP shills on televison.
Conservative pundits say whatever the NRP line is, and right now the talking points about Dean are that he’s unelectable. They are strangely silent on Wes Clark, which to my mind means they aren’t worried about him.
My feeling is, Dean is about the only real Dem running for the Presidency who has a shot in hell at getting the nomination. Gephart Edwards and Kerry are career pols who aren’t all that principled, the D after their names is just their current label, Lieberman is a Republican at heart, and the rest are just also-rans, however admirable they might be as people.
If Gephart (sp?) Kerry or Edwards get the nod, watch for more ineffectual, Republican-lite campaigning that will leave the Democratic faithful uninspired. If Lieberman gets the nod, look for a race to the right, leaving even the Repub centrists wondering who the hell is going to represent them.
Dean’s our best hope, the Pubbies clearly intend to split the Dem vote by discouraging the DLC types if Dean wins. My personal feeling is that Bush has governed so badly, that he’ll be running not so much against a candidate, but a Coalition of the Outraged who will vote for just about ANYBODY who can beat him.
I suspect it’s a combination of things. Ultimately, Dean represents both more of and less of a risk to conservatives than Gephardt, Kerry, et al.
He’s more of a risk because if he gets elected, he can pretty easily claim an anti-conservative mandate; if he does well, he could have significant anti-conservative coattails. He’s not approaching this election in a traditional manner; he’s not playing it safe; he’s making anti-conservatism chic. If he gets into office, he may well push a progressive/liberal agenda and push it hard.
He’s less of a risk precisely because he’s not approaching the election in a traditional manner. He’s approaching it in a very confrontational, risky manner.
So conservatives focus on the latter part to say that he’s unelectable. They think the chances of his being elected are very small. But they fear what will happen if he actually is elected.
I think they’re off-base on both counts. Dean is both more electable than Shodan et al think, and less radical than they fear. Dean is going to be the Democratic candidate, but the election is nowhere near decided at that point. The performance of the economy, the progress of the Iraq war, the progress of the war against terrorism, the debates, the unfolding of various scandals in both campaigns, and (allow me a moment of idealism) the candidates’ stances on issues will determine this election.
I don’t doubt for a second that that is your personal feeling. But given Bush’s high approval ratings, do you understand that there’s a sizeable chunk of the country that doesn’t see it that way?
Don’t confuse “can get the Democractic nomination” with “can be elected by the general population”. Dean certainly can do the former. Whether he can do the latter is anyone’s guess.
I am scared poopless by a candidate that will run on a anti-war/raise taxes platform. Yep, terrified. Heck, such a platform lead Mcgovern to a landslide victory!
As far as rants go, Avalonian, the OP is pretty lame.
hypnoboth, you are Bill Safire and I claim my fifty bucks.
I don’t know what’s going to happen; I’ll vote for Dean if it’s him but he’s not my choice of Dem. Most of the Dems I know who are following the race (which is not most of the Dems I know yet) feel roughly the same way; not a strong Dean supporter among them yet.
Thanks for proving my point. That’s a schtick I’ve heard too often lately.
There’s also a sizable chunk of the country that does… and approval ratings at this stage are a poor indicator for November.
Brutus gives another predictable response, complete with McGovern reference. How very Ann Coulter of him!
True enough. In spite of my confidence that Dean can win, the November elections are really anyone’s game. However, to state that Dean is “unelectable” is (to me) simply a break with reality. I like what Left Hand of Dorkness had to say about it, actually. Dean is far from the radical the conservatives like to portray him as, and he’s certainly electable. Whether he will be elected remains in question.
These people are confusing Dean with Kucinich. He’s the unelectable one (although he had a great one-liner response to that in Sunday’s debate).
True as far as it goes. Would you spout that line if Bush’s approval rating was 40%? The fact is, it is still better to have a high approval rating than a low one. What is driving that rating is some success in Iraq and an improving economy. Unless you can predict that either of those things is going to change for the worse, it is unlikely that Bush’s approval rating will tank.
The OP makes good points. If they think he’ll lose in a landslide, why are they focusing on him as a target? Is it an “any pub is good pub” thing? Why not target the guy whom they perceive to be the big threat, whoever that is?
One answer is that the conservatives who have power in the media are trying to predetermine a Bush/Dean outcome by acting like Dean already has the nomination. That seems improbably nuanced to me.
Being a realist, I’d have to say the same thing. I’d certainly be encouraged if Bush’s approval rating were lower, but I’d still say it was too early to be a good indicator.
I’d say that a lot of things can change in 10 months. At the very least, it should be an interesting campaign year.
Who are they? The OP mentions “every conservative talk show host or pundit” Stoli refers to “the conservatives who have power in the media”.
Do you guys seriously think that there is some sort of conservative groupthink nationwide strategy at work in the US today? Do you have any proof for this outragious claim?
At the very least, do tell us who the participants are in this vast conspiracy. I’m curious.
Dean has been getting a free ride from the other side so far, letting him expend his campaign funds in the race for the Democratic nomination. Now, as the putative nominee, the real campaign is about to begin.
Nice little try at a spin, there, [bAvalonian**, in the “anything bad that you say about Dean means you’re scared of him” stuff. You would probably have better luck with a better candidate.
And my prediction in return is that you better hope those words taste good come next November.
But I guess we will see, won’t we?
Regards,
Shodan
PS - Please cite anywhere where I said Dean is “unelectable”. He should not be elected, as he is another liberal idiot, but this is different from cannot be elected. Carter, Dukakis, and Mondale were also liberals, but not all of them lost. Dean could win and Bush could lose. But they won’t.
