Sunday, February 01, 2004
A Few Necessary Corrections
Dean's "Meet the Press" interview, the jist of the most recent email from one of the Campaign's loudest voices, and the Joe Trippi's interview on "Inside Politics" have inspired me to post a few thoughts.
1) All the overblown claims of "over half a million people committed to changing America" from the Deaniacs insults our collective political history. Forgive me for discrediting more than the population of the City of Minneapolis, but 500K ain't much in the grander context of this country's population. Any student of political history realizes just how many votes 3rd Party candidates usually get. Even though Nader "only" got 2.9M votes in 2000, Perot got 19.5M in '92 (Wisconsin's own Robert LaFollette got nearly 5M in '24). Check out the following link for a much-needed dose of reality (LINK).
2) During the "Meet the Press" interview, the first 20+ minutes were spent discussing political process questions (polls, momentum, attacks, campaign donations, yada yada yada). Within that eggregious waste of quality interview time, Dean continued his attack on Kerry for being the biggest recipient of "special interests" donations over the last 15 years in the Senate (a weirdly arbitrary time frame given that he was elected in 1984). Trippi also repeated that same charge a few times in his interview with Judy Woodruff. Valid point. In context. But while I won't even begin to defend Kerry's PAC contributions, I can't get past the hypocrisy of Dean later in his interview touting his NRA endorsements as an indication of how he'll pick up both rural and union votes in any general election fight. HELLO...can anyone out there think of a bigger "special interest" influence than the NRA?!! My own positions on gun control are pretty radical (outlaw handguns, mandatory registration of every firearm legal for future usage in any context) but I'll be damned if I'll let Dean off the hook for this sort of two-faced position in the COURSE OF THE SAME FRICKIN' INTERVIEW. Dean's smart - I've seen it and I won't discard his larger value to the Party. But this sort of cake-having-and-eating is ridiculous.
Dean's "Meet the Press" interview, the jist of the most recent email from one of the Campaign's loudest voices, and the Joe Trippi's interview on "Inside Politics" have inspired me to post a few thoughts.
1) All the overblown claims of "over half a million people committed to changing America" from the Deaniacs insults our collective political history. Forgive me for discrediting more than the population of the City of Minneapolis, but 500K ain't much in the grander context of this country's population. Any student of political history realizes just how many votes 3rd Party candidates usually get. Even though Nader "only" got 2.9M votes in 2000, Perot got 19.5M in '92 (Wisconsin's own Robert LaFollette got nearly 5M in '24). Check out the following link for a much-needed dose of reality (LINK).
2) During the "Meet the Press" interview, the first 20+ minutes were spent discussing political process questions (polls, momentum, attacks, campaign donations, yada yada yada). Within that eggregious waste of quality interview time, Dean continued his attack on Kerry for being the biggest recipient of "special interests" donations over the last 15 years in the Senate (a weirdly arbitrary time frame given that he was elected in 1984). Trippi also repeated that same charge a few times in his interview with Judy Woodruff. Valid point. In context. But while I won't even begin to defend Kerry's PAC contributions, I can't get past the hypocrisy of Dean later in his interview touting his NRA endorsements as an indication of how he'll pick up both rural and union votes in any general election fight. HELLO...can anyone out there think of a bigger "special interest" influence than the NRA?!! My own positions on gun control are pretty radical (outlaw handguns, mandatory registration of every firearm legal for future usage in any context) but I'll be damned if I'll let Dean off the hook for this sort of two-faced position in the COURSE OF THE SAME FRICKIN' INTERVIEW. Dean's smart - I've seen it and I won't discard his larger value to the Party. But this sort of cake-having-and-eating is ridiculous.
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