January 10, 2004
I love Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington just wrote a piece about Dean entitled Unelectable, My Ass!. It's a great look at all the stupid stuff that the DLC and others have been saying about Howard Dean.
We like that he's angry. So are we. We've got a lot to be angry about. How is it that the other Dems are not?
What's with all the 1972 McGovern comparisons? How about let's compare him to 1968 Bobby Kennedy, instead.
Why are they sticking to the "tried-and-untrue" swing voter strategy? Sure, if we can convince a Bush voter to vote Dem instead, then that effectively counts as two votes, where enticing new voters only gets us one. But getting the two votes is A. Lot. Harder. It's like saying, "hey, you can buy one of these widgets for $5; but I've got a great deal, you can buy two of them in a package... for $20." I mean, sure, we need to continue thinking about the swing voters, and go for the easy ones, but not at the expense of strategies that will bring in new voters (especially as those are more likely to work *and* the people they bring in are much more likely to stick with the Dems than to swing right back for the next election).
And why have we let the Democrats abandon FDR's great vision? We used to really believe that a truly advanced nation could provide for those who didn't have enough. Where did we let it go?
"No Democrat can win by playing 'Whose swagger is swaggier?' or 'Whose flight suit is tighter?'" --Arianna Huffington
Posted by blahedo at 1:46am on 10 Jan 2004