Twelve years ago yesterday (my apologies for the delay), Howard Dean's campaign imploded with the most overplayed quote since Michigan Governor George Romney said he was "brainwashed" in 1967.
"Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York.... And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan, and then we're going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House. YEEEEEAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
Look, I would never have voted for Dean (he was a pacifist disaster), but.....I really did think the guy got a raw deal out of that whole thing. There wasn't ANYTHING Dean did that was ANY different than Al Gore going to a black church and sounding like a John Hagee wannabe in the 2000 campaign (and - quite frankly - looking like a phony and condescending politician every step and breath he took).
It wasn't that Dean was coming unhinged or even looked like it; it was that THE MEDIA SAID OVER AND OVER AND OVER again that this was PROOF that he was just a tad bit insane. Dean would probably have lost anyway (interesting if the Iowa caucuses held been held two weeks later - when we had been told there was NEVER any evidence of WMDs in Iraq), but the overkill here from the press was perhaps the worst I've ever seen.
(This is why they will determine if there's a race or not and who THEY think is viable).
"Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York.... And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan, and then we're going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House. YEEEEEAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
Look, I would never have voted for Dean (he was a pacifist disaster), but.....I really did think the guy got a raw deal out of that whole thing. There wasn't ANYTHING Dean did that was ANY different than Al Gore going to a black church and sounding like a John Hagee wannabe in the 2000 campaign (and - quite frankly - looking like a phony and condescending politician every step and breath he took).
It wasn't that Dean was coming unhinged or even looked like it; it was that THE MEDIA SAID OVER AND OVER AND OVER again that this was PROOF that he was just a tad bit insane. Dean would probably have lost anyway (interesting if the Iowa caucuses held been held two weeks later - when we had been told there was NEVER any evidence of WMDs in Iraq), but the overkill here from the press was perhaps the worst I've ever seen.
(This is why they will determine if there's a race or not and who THEY think is viable).
