Dean is a hope. I would like to see him run.
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Howard Dean isn't any prize. He talks a good populist game, but he's as much a corporate Democrat when push comes to shove as any DLCer. Dean wants desperately to be in with the DLC insiders, to play with the big boys so badly, but they don't want him.
Most voters judge politicians by their personalities and mistakenly assume politicians' ideological positions for their own when they've decided they personally like the politician. That's certainly true of Howard Dean. He's a nice guy, but he's not a liberal and definitely not married to what I would say are sacrosanct Democratic Party positions, like pro-choice and public health care.
Just about all professional Democratic politicians want to make the Democratic party hospitable to anti-choice people, as noted in this article from 12/04 - http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/washington/wnb121504.htm
The only way to do that is for the party to not take a stance on abortion, to remove any reference to 'choice'. During Dean's tenure as chairman of the DNC, he indicated in several interviews that the intent was to move the DemocraticParty from referring to abortion at all in its platform. Here's one of those interviews, from 11/1/05:
Video - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/9882255#9882255
Transcript - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9883824/
Dems May Waver on Choice, Repro Rights 01/14/05 http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2144/context/archive
In addition to Howard Dean working on the DLC's behalf to move the Democratic Party to the right, and to change the Democratic Party's pro-woman's health policies and protect a woman's right to choose, Dean is not for single payer. He never has been. He has repeatedly snatched defeat from the jaws of history every time the left begins to get any traction on an issue (the public option in healthcare reform was just the latest example). As soon as the DLCers get what they want, they cast Dean aside and leave him to the scrap heap of obscurity (again). They get him to do heavy lifting for them (keeping us liberals on the hook), but in the end they slam the door in his face and break his heart every time. And even then, he still carries their water, as he did yesterday on Rachel Maddow's show -- That was Dean trying to have it both ways -- As a populist, disappointed with Obama and Congress, but not enough to really call them all out and start talking turkey.
Professional Democrats have bought into and are loyal to the system that supports them.
About Mitch McConnell
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