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Edited on Thu Feb-12-04 08:44 PM by Tom Rinaldo
While I disagreed with a policy or two, in the large picture Dean had it right. He fought hard for all the right things, and he fought well, and his campaign has had a huge impact, and it is all positive. Now even John Kerry is a stronger campaigner, and thus a better candidate, smoked out of his shell, energized to confront the Republican machine, and most of that is because of the challenge Dean presented to Kerry. But that is the least of it. Dean woke up a sleeping mass of people and gave them real power. Dean rallied Democrats everywhere to battle against the Republicans, while most party leaders were wiping the sleep from their eyes after waking up in bed with them. Dean was right about Iraq, and he never wavered in making that case.
Now, here is the hard part, Dean was going to lose anyway, even though that is all true. I have been so upset coming to grips with the fact that Clark would not become our President, no matter how much I believed he was the right man, at the right time, for the job. It doesn't change the facts. Wesley Clark has a brilliant analytical mind, that is how he rose to the rank of Four Star General. He believes in himself, just as Dean believes in himself, but he looked at the battle field and he concluded that Kerry held all the strategic advantages, and that Kerry would ultimately prevail. And that continuing the battle now would only lead to more blood shed but would not alter the outcome. Some of our forces would be spent in the course of that prolonged conflict, and another battle important awaits us, to defeat Bush in November.
I can't even imagine the internal discipline it must take to give everything you have to a quest the way that Dean and Clark have, and to then conclude that it will not end in victory, and in the case of Clark, to immediately act on that conclusion, to close ranks behind your former adversary for the sake of the battles ahead. Clark is ahead of me on this one. I was already trying to move through my disappointment, debating whether I would still vote for Clark in New York, or perhaps switch to Dean, dreaming of scenarios where Clark would get drafted once again, and last of all, trying to imagine myself working for Kerry in the fall. I can't shift gears that quickly, though whenever I let myself think about it, I thought Kerry had it won now.
If not now, later, if when the convention comes and the delegates arrive, Kerry has the majority he needs, Dean will step forward and praise Kerry. They will clasp hands at the podium, and they will unite at rallies across the nation fighting together against Bush. Dean will do this as soon as he is convinced that Kerry can't be stopped, and he will do it for the Party, and he will do it for the Nation. Clark believes that now, and that is why he is doing what he is doing now.
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