Joan Walsh writes a mea culpa about Dean’s political skills and suggests that he might be far more electable than people thought.
As someone who normally identifies as a DLC kinda guy, I’ve been more than appalled by Lieberman and the DLC attacks on Dean–a guy who makes the point that one needs a balanced budget to attack social justice. Hello Marty McFrom, but what the hell is it that you hate about the guy? That he argued there wasn’t an imminent threat from Iraq. Well, it turns out From and I were wrong. There was a long term threat and Dean was willing to address it as such. I can admit I was wrong, but apparently the DLC can’t bother to notice that the nuclear program wasn’t as advanced as previously thought.
And frankly, I want my country back.
More interesting was a few minutes of Chris Mathews that I caught. The Good Dr. Luntz was on and doing his focus group bit and, uhhh…, well people just like Dean. It appears to be very similar to how people are attracted to Dubya except there seemed to be a level of trust in regards to how well Dean actually understood the issue.
Adding more is this from Josh Marshall who points out that the successful Democratic candidate has to appeal to the base of hatred while at the same time playing to the general audience in the general. Josh also points out the short sighted vision of the DLC and suggests some folks are trying to hit them over the head with a clue by four. Good for them.
Does this fit Dean? Given that in a recent interview he slipped and talked about how in the general election he’ll have to move to more general issues—Yeah, he gets it. That doesn’t mean he wins, but it does mean he gets the drill a lot better than Lieberman or Al From.