my concern with dean

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

i'm a supporter and am voting for him, but i think he's allowing hiumself to be defined as a one-issue candidate. he really needs to get his positions on domestic issues out there. go after the corporate scandals and gop ties to them. emphasize his health care plan more.

the media is trying to make him into mcgovern and he needs to get his name linked to other causes to avois this characterization

(though for the record. i'm a big fan of mcgovern)

[Boom_cha]

1. Dean is to McGovern

as Reagan was to Barry Goldwater.

That's the new Dean mantra.

Read this article
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=871

snip
Lieberman's National Press Club speech signaled his intention to echo the conservative Democratic Leadership Council's theme that nominating a Democrat who shares the values of the party faithful would be dangerous. Like the DLC, he is trying to paint more liberal candidates as 2004 versions of 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern. But the comparison that comes to mind when Lieberman bashes candidates who are popular with the party's base voters is not to the 1972 race, but rather to the 1980 contest for the Republican presidential nomination.

That year, moderate Republicans were horrified by the prospect that the party cadres were preparing to nominate former California Governor Ronald Reagan for president. Reagan's foes warned that if the conservative icon became the nominee, the November election results would be as disastrous as the 1964 campaign where standard-bearing conservative Barry Goldwater got trounced.

The pundits repeated the Goldwater-Reagan comparison constantly; even after Reagan's campaign took off, Time magazine declared that, "His biggest problem may be that the very hard-line conservative positions that appeal to the enthusiasts who vote in G.O.P. primaries are exactly those that might not attract the much larger body of people who vote in November." There was even talk that former President Gerald Ford might have to be drafted into the primary competition in order to stop Reagan. But the party faithful could not be dissuaded. They followed their principles and their hearts and went with Reagan. The November election results proved them right. Even if Americans did not agree with Reagan's ideology, they preferred his confident style to the more nuanced and centrist offerings of Jimmy Carter and John Anderson.

Democrats who counsel compromise going into the 2004 contest are likely to find themselves disregarded in much the same way that Republican compromisers were in 1980. And rightly so. If the party chooses a candidate who is confident enough to aggressively challenge George W. Bush, Democrats might well find that steering an bold course is far more appealing to the great mass of American voters that the circumnavigations proposed by Joe Lieberman.

[denverbill]

2. Bull.

Is Kucinich a 'one issue' guy? Or Graham? Or any of the other anti-war Democrats? Who gets to define them? The media? The DLC? The Republicans?

The war isn't even an issue any more. Whether Dean was for or against it doesn't matter, because the war is over, and we are stuck with the cleanup/occupation.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

3. i think you misunderstood me

this isn't an attack on dean. not by a long shot. i'm a supporter. just wanted to talk strategy.

the media is trying to make him strictly an antiwar candidate (yes, the war is over, but do they notice?)and i think he needs to counter it quick. if the rw defines him too early, he'll have a hard time overcoming it. that's my fear