WSWS: The rise and fall of Howard Dean

[RichM]

"The Dean campaign was one indicator of the broad and intense popular disaffection with the Bush presidency, something that has only been underscored by the Democratic primaries, in which exit polls show significant numbers of voters describing their attitude toward the president as one of “anger” or “hatred....”

As the year began, preparing a possible Democratic alternative to Bush emerged as a serious concern for the American ruling class, and the focus of the Democratic primaries became ever more clearly the vetting of a candidate who could be trusted and accepted by the financial oligarchy that ultimately controls both major parties.

There existed palpable unease within these circles over the Dean candidacy. It was not so much that his political program was beyond the pale—much of it consists of boilerplate policies that are shared by politicians in both parties. Rather, Dean—whose experience consisted of serving as governor in a state with a population of just over 600,000 people— was seen as a man with no real political history, unproved and untested. To the extent that he appealed to popular anger and attracted the support of a section of students, he was further regarded as suspect.

Dean became the object of relentless and often humiliating attacks in the media. The attempt to manipulate public opinion had its effect, in part because of the tremendous hostility to the Bush administration that his campaign had tapped into. Primary voters became increasingly concerned with picking the candidate with the best chance of forcing Bush out of the White House. On an instinctual level, many voters recognized that “electability” meant a candidate acceptable to the existing political establishment...."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/feb2004/dean-f19.shtml