With Endorsement of Dean, Gore Steers Democrats Away From Clintonism

[realFedUp]

(I never completely agree with Brownstein's opinions,
but it's a decent read on Dean)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-outlook15dec15,1,2317075.story

With Endorsement of Dean, Gore Steers Democrats Away From Clintonism
Ronald Brownstein

December 15, 2003

As a political movement, Clintonism arguably was born on May 6, 1991, when Bill Clinton delivered a seminal speech on his "New Democratic" vision to a conference of the Democratic Leadership Council in Cleveland.

Political historians may conclude that Clintonism was eclipsed as the dominant set of ideas in the Democratic Party on Tuesday, when Al Gore, Clinton's vice president, endorsed Howard Dean in the 2004 presidential race.

Dean has demonstrated many assets in his bid for the Democratic nomination. He's run a groundbreaking campaign that has changed forever the way candidates look at the Internet. He's shown the capacity to inspire great passion among Democratic activists. He speaks the way a boxer jabs, with sharp thrusts that strike many voters as heartfelt and uninfected by political calculation.

snip

Dean, by contrast, offers a biting, sometimes red-faced, partisanship that presents issues from abortion and civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans to taxes as an unambiguous conflict between right (liberals) and wrong (conservatives); in contrast to Clinton's call for a new synthesis between left and right, Dean says the Democratic Party's principal problem is that it has blurred too many differences with the Republican Party.