OK. I’ve generally kept from making posts involving Howard Dean, as it feels to be somehow the ‘turf’ of the actual Dean supporter onsite and I have absolutely no desire to start a fight with Katherine over her candidate’s election prospects. It looks like we’ll find out the answer to that in November ’04.
With all that in mind, I have to ask myself: whatinhell is Jonathan Chait thinking?
For anybody out there who’s just discovered the blogging thing for the first time, or woken up from a coma, Chait’s a The New Republic senior editor who wrote this fun piece earlier about his explicit Bush-hatred and how it wasn’t all that bad, really. While I take a certain VRWC Deathbeast exception to that stance, when all’s said and done it’s hardly my problem if Chait wants to exhibit his prejudices in public. I’m quite thankful for it, actually.
Still, you would expect that the man would stay true to his Hate Object, or something: apparently not, because he’s started up an anti-Dean blog.
Why this is remains a bit of a mystery, as Chait himself admits that he doesn’t understand fully his Dean hatred (there’s a lengthy header fronting each section which is too long to quote), but said hatred is quite real and Chait lays into Dean with all due speed and zeal. Which is his privilege, of course – but I think that he’s either too late, or too early. This Diary of a Dean-o-Phobe will not accomplish the task of knocking out Dean from the primaries, and by the time that the convention rolls around any shock value that might arise from seeing a senior editor of a famous liberal magazine be so firmly against Dean will have faded away. When it comes right down to it, Chait is essentially doing his part to make the nomination process more of a bitterly contested mess that will bleed money and good will.
And, as I’ve said in the past, anything that delays a swift nomination process is not a good idea for the Democrats.
(Link via Sullivan: I suggest that some of you not let his glee on the subject distract from the fact that this is one case where he just might have a reason to be gleeful.)
Moe
I got kind of a religious vibe from that page; it’s weird. Unfortunately my apotheosis is scheduled for after the election and Clark isn’t going to be the nominee of my side – if Chiatt wants to trash Dean can’t he at least do it in the usual TNR debating-x style? As is, this is just our-enemies-confuse-us in place of confusion-to-our-enemies.
The New Republic has a bunch of good, smart reporters, but they seem to think that loyalty to the Democrats is a vice. Give me the American Prospect any day.
Chait could help stop Dean from getting the nomination, but not like this. He could do it not by collecting a bunch of arguments against Dean any supporter has heard approximately a thousand times, but by talking about why Clark is better–not only more electable, but better.
TNR would never do that, though. It would require praising a politician, which I think in their eyes is totally uncool.
I hope they’ll take it down if and when he gets the nomination but I doubt it. I’m beginning to believe that a significant part of the party would rather lose this election so they can say “I told you so” than have Dean win. (Very Richard III, eh?) It’s hard to explain Kerry and Lieberman’s recent behavior without an element of spite. And the DLC, forget it.
(A significant part of the leadership and a few journalists, that is. I think most active Democratic voters will rally around whoever the nominee is.)
How was Clinton received by the pundits and his co-candidates during the 92 primaries? I was in an evil country at the time, not that hostile (relative to my current rabidity re Bush fils) to Bush pere, and blissfully unconcerned with primary politics. I have to figure Kerry&Co are frightened about the country’s future and not coping well – but maybe this is business as usual.
Well, I was 13 and blogs didn’t exist, but…. Paul Tsongas said that Bush would “open him up like a soft peanut” after the Gennifer Flowers and draft thing, but it didn’t get particularly ugly between them. Jerry Brown kept giving out his 800 number. And it was clear pretty early on that the others weren’t going anywhere. The whole primary season was much later, of course.
’92 was kind of a weird year–all the heavyweights stayed out, so the governor from Arkansas was the closest thing there was to the establishment candidate. Whereas this year almost all of the heavy-hitters got in the race, but they’re losing to a complete unknown (a year ago I only knew of Dean because of the civil unions thing, and I’m not sure I’d even heard of Wesley Clark.)
I think things are especially bitter with Kerry because Dean stole New Hampshire right out from under him (and for that matter is ahead in Massachusetts). And the Gore endorsement didn’t help matters any with Lieberman, who’s never been a loyal partisan anyway.
I too have a strong dislike (and distrust) for Dean. My intuition seems to be based on the way Dean presents himself. He stresses a “you and me” bonding which I’ve learned from experience usually means you are being manipulated. Pyschologists have even noted that the “you and me” line is sometimes an indicator that you are being conned. Dean also seems to be peddling power to his followers. “Empower you” is a frequent refrain that plays to anger and seems like such a base appeal. After the Dean/OBL ad, Dean blogged to his followers, ‘they attached your campaign, send me money’. It worked. He got something like half a mil in a couple of days. For these reasons, I have come to see Dean as cunning, and I don’t want four more years of that.
Wes Clark, on the other hand, says these are my credentials, this is what I’ve accomplished, here’s my vision, I want to be your president. His message is about hope, not power or anger.
I’m beginning to believe that a significant part of the party would rather lose this election so they can say “I told you so” than have Dean win.
Plausible, and certainly far less crazy than William Safire/Kathryn Lopez-style Hillary conspiracies. Although I think the “other side” thinks of Deanketeers like you and I, Katherine, and think “they’re willing to risk the presidency over a guy with a flashy website.”
But, yeah, Moe, this is the wrong way for Chait to go about this. Soon enough, as Kos points out today, we Dems will have to circle the wagons and unite behind a nominee, and it won’t do anybody any good if there’s been a deliberately nasty rift created over Dean or anyone else.
Kurtz on Dean – sort of.