Eating Their Own

I'm not necessarily a huge fan of Howard Dean, but I do admit that he is exactly what the Democrats need: a candidate who says pretty much what he is thinking, admits to not knowing absolutely everything, and is a common sense kinda guy with a very humanist aura surrounding his political ideals. Personally, I need someone more Left than he to light my voting fire, but at least he isn't part of the same worn out stable of losers, liars and soft compromisers that have annihilated the Democratic Party and forcibly morphed it into Corporate Party #2.

It is no surprise, then, that the organ responsible for selling off the party apparatus to the corporate moneymen are so miffed with Mr. Dean that they have begun a public attack campaign, using words that were once honest descriptors of the ideals of the party to "smear" Dean in advance of the hard campaigning to come. The Democratic Leadership Council, self-described as "centrist" and "moderate", and the primary mover behind Bill Clinton's ascension to office in 1992, has called Dean "an elitist liberal" and member of "the McGovern-Mondale" wing of the party, responsible for losing "49 states in two elections and transform[ing] Democrats from a strong national party into a much weaker regional one."

There are too manyy flaws within this one brief statement to examine them all, but foremost among them is the idea that sch a wing in the party exists ( it does not), or that it has anything to do with losing elections. The Democrats lost recent elections, uncluding 2000 (the Supremes stole the election in legal terms, but Al Gore and Co. put them into that position in the first place, and they slavishly served their masters) election, by dint of their owen hubris, arrogance, stupidity, and foolishness. The guy the DLC put into office for eight years, and a brilliant campaigner, Bill Clinton, was not invited to do what he had already proven he could do at the convention, which is energize the base and assault the opposition.

The Democratic party is a mess at the national level because it has been bought and paid for by corporate interests, the same ones that own Resident Shrub and his merry band of war criminals. They keep the Dems to one side for obvious reasons - should the unruly rabble (also known as voters) put them back into national power, corporate boardroms will be protected. Given the choice between Republicans and Republicans - Lite, they'll take the real thing every single time, but at least the faux version can't hurt them too much should they get back into the drivers seat. The DLC is exactly that - faux Republicans and corporte lap dogs.

So Howard Dean, despite his very "conservative" stance on gun control and financial issues, is too "liberal" (be sure to put the requisite sneer into your mind-voice when reading that word) for the "centrist" junta that has taken over the Democratic Party, once quiter proud of its liberal values and policies...and it should be again.

The only person to come to Dean's defence is, of all people, Sen. Jim Jeffords, who equated what the DLC is doing to Dean to the tactics employed by the Republican party that Jeffords disavowed by becoming an independent. Pathetic that a former Republican and still political conservative senator is the only one to come to the aid of such a "liberal" candidate. Frankly, anyone from the Democratic party that wnats to catch my attention should brand him or herself a Liberal and run with it. Better to live as a lion than to die sheared sheep.