Washington — Just as things were going swimmingly for the
presidential campaign of Dr. Howard Dean, a thick gray storm cloud
floats over his shiny oval of a head. In New Hampshire, scene of
the first presidential primary, he has forged ahead of his nearest
opponent, Senator John Pierre Kerry. Last month it was the
Francophone senator who was ahead, 25% to 22%. Now Dr. Howard Dean
is ahead 38% to 17% in New Hampshire. Vast crowds are turning up
all over the country to hear him. In Seattle, Washington, 10,000
showed up in another of what the New York Times reports are
“seemingly spontaneous crowds.” You know, word spreads from
Starbucks to Starbucks, from health food shoppe to health food
shoppe: “Dr. Howard Dean is coming!” Of a sudden 20,000
Birkenstocks are stomping towards Dr. Howard Dean’s venue.
There they will hear Dr. Howard Dean, attired in button down
dress shirt and a nice tie — he never wears a jacket, sports
jacket or otherwise. That is part of his message: “Don’t be
stuffy.” So he leaves the jacket in the plane. He does wear pants,
usually the suit pants to the jacket that he does not wear, and he
wears leather shoes, but rarely wingtips. Nixon wore wingtips. A
lot of Dr. Howard Dean’s supporters remember Nixon, not with
fondness. Nixon lied to the American people.
Dr. Howard Dean’s wardrobe is only part of his magic. He is very
angry with President George W. Bush. In fact, of all the Democratic
candidates Dr. Howard Dean is the maddest. This seems to be the
reason for the large crowds. They are really mad too. They love it
when Dr. Howard Deans says things such as, “When this President
talks, sometimes the opposite of what he says is really the truth.”
As with Nixon so with George W. Bush, liberal Democrats do not like
to be lied to. That is one of the things they admired about Bill
Clinton. He never lied to the American
people…unnecessarily.
“He’s not running a campaign, he’s running a movement,” writes
Natasha C. on the Dean website, if the New York Times is to be
believed. “These are protest-size crowds, these are not
politics-size crowds, and that makes a critical difference,” Ms. C.
asseverates. Indeed it does. Join the first protest of the
Twenty-First Century. The only problem this protest movement faces
is that there is almost nothing to protest. Yet Dr. Howard Dean can
face up to that problem later. For now he has that storm cloud
overhead.
Just as he is forging ahead in the polls and his fund-raising
appeals are enriching the campaign so handsomely that he is
considering eschewing federal funds by ignoring spending limits,
comes devastating news. One of his opponents among the nine
Democrats seeking the party’s coveted nomination, former Senator
Carol Moseley Braun, has been endorsed by the National Organization
for Women’s Political Action committee and by the National Women’s
Political Caucus — two in one day!
“We are particularly pleased that out of a field of strong
progressive candidates, the strongest feminist candidate turns out
to be a woman,” intoned the president of the National Organization
for Women upon announcing her support of former Senator Braun. I
suppose this is another first, a woman Democratic presidential
candidate who is also a feminist or is it a feminist Democratic
presidential candidate who is also a woman? At any rate, former
Senator Braun was equally obscure. Said she: “Together we are going
to take the ‘men only’ sign off the White House door.” Possibly she
does not know how big the White House is. It has many doors, and I
cannot recall any with a “Men Only” sign on it.
So it looks like Dr. Howard Dean is not going to get the
feminist vote. In his party that is a large percentage of the vote.
Now what if Senator John Pierre Kerry takes the gay vote? And what
if the environmentalists go to Congressman Dennis Kucinich? We know
that the unions lean towards other candidates and very few African
Americans appear in Dr. Howard Dean’s spontaneous crowds.
The problem the clever Dr. Howard Dean faces is that his party
is a mélange of one-issue enthusiasts. Dr. Dean has reached
for the anti-war crowd but what about the other groups? He hopes to
corral them by striking the one chord that holds them all together,
hatred of President George W. Bush. Democrats get very mad when
they think someone other than a Democrat is lying to them.
