Dean wows 'em in South Carolina

[Brian_Expat]

Dean's "electability in the South" seems rather good in South Carolina:

http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3860722&p1=0

A panel offering advice to President Bush and his Democratic rivals had just gotten underway at Renaissance Weekend in Charleston, S.C., when a surprise visitor strode to the podium. It was Sen. Fritz Hollings, South Carolina's senior senator, with a word for the assembled strivers.

. . . snip. . .

"Howard Dean is right," declared the silver-haired Hollings, launching into a spirited defense of Dean's assertion that Americans are no safer now that Saddam Hussein has been captured. "Saddam wasn't causing anybody any problem. You have some little smart-aleck announcer on television asking, 'Do you think we're better off with Saddam gone?' What else is gone? We have 456 dead; 11,000 maimed for life, and I don't think it was worth it. I had intended to vote against that resolution , but Rummy and Condi Rice and Cheney said you can't wait until the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud. I thought they had some intelligence, that they knew something."

So Hollings is pissed he was lied to by the Bush administration! But what did the crowd think?

What the Dean people saw in Charleston was not the angry, vein-popping politician they see on television, and many came away impressed. One longtime Renaissance-goer pronounced Dean "Clintonesque," the highest compliment that can be paid in this crowd. In response to a question testing his youth-culture awareness, Dean did a brief takeoff of a song by Outkast, the hot hip-hop group. "He knows the lyrics to Outkast songs and, man, can that dude dance," enthused a 16-year-old.

And Clark didn't do so well in Eleanor Clift's eyes. . .

Clark didn't fare quite so well. He arrived late in the evening, coming off an eight-state "True Grits" tour of the South. He relied too much on his stump speech and stock phrases: "America is at risk; America needs better leadership." He doesn't have the snap, crackle and pop that Dean has. He got several softball questions, including what he would want the one sentence on his tombstone to read and how he would differentiate his vision from the other eight Democrats in the field. He said it would be presumptuous of him to write his obituary as president since he hadn't yet been elected (too literal an interpretation of the question), and ticked off the positions he and the other Democrats shared, like pro-choice and affirmative action, but declined to offer an overarching vision.

[slinkerwink]

1. great news!

[Brian_Expat]

2. Au contraire, Dean is doomed

Didn't you get the latest missive from the Powers that Be? People don't matter!!! :evilgrin:

[Skwmom]

3. MSNBC which has a record of

dissing Clark. Not exactly a trustworthy news source.

[ClarkGraham2004]

4. Yes, they have an anti-CNN thing going on.

[Brian_Expat]

5. Interesting

So when anti-Dean news comes up, it's accurate, but when Eleanor Clift (a well-respected Dem commentator whose pieces get published far and wide) makes an observation, it's anti-Clark by design?

Heh.