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January 11, 2004
Dean: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Democrats tend to have a hard time dealing with Dean in all his complex glory: the good (he's a terrific candidate in some ways and is helping remake the party in ways that are absolutely necessary); the bad (he's got a number of very serious political liabilities that might make it difficult to carry swing states like Ohio); and the ugly (not only that he's more likely than, say, Clark or Gephardt to get creamed).
One Democrat who doesn't have this problem is Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic. Cohn, a Dean supporter, is nonetheless well aware of his dark side, so to speak, and lays it all out in a terrific article, "The Case for Dean". Highly recommended.
For those Dean opponents who have a hard time seeing the ways Dean walks in the light, DR recommends Nick Confessore's article in the new Washington Monthly, "The Myth of the Democratic Establishment". Confessore shows how the Dean phenomenom is, in a sense, an inevitable response by the party rank-and-file to a party establishment and infrastructure that are not only not effective, they're barely even there. Thus, if Dean did not exist, the party, if it really wanted to move forward, would have to invent him.
But, of course, they don't have to. He's here and all Democrats should realize that, whether or not he gets nominated and, if nominated, whether or not he gets elected, his campaign has made a signal contribution to revitalizing the Democratic party. As for those who would have preferred he'd stayed in Vermont and never achieved such prominence--in the immortal words of Marion Barry: Get over it.
Posted by Ruy Teixeira at 11:59 PM | link
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