I don't know if you've seen some recent negative postings about Dean at www.theclarksphere.com. Unfortunately, besides his negative discussion concerning Dean, the poster provides generally intelligent analysis about American politics.
We deal with this issue, and how Dean can allay concerns, in How Dean Can Win: A Response to the Naysayers (Part 2 of 4), over at JUSIPER. Read it, and leave us your comments!
I just checked out Clarksphere. His posts on Dean are, how shall we say it? ... TOTALLY WACKED. They would work much better as parody than serious discussion. I'm not worried that the "Dean is eros" and "Clark is agape" meme will take off anytime soon. (These are two of the four Greek words for "love," for those who haven't ready the Odyssey in a while.) This sounds like a guy with too much education, and I say this as someone who's been in school for the past 27 years.
Ladies and gents,
All these witless attacks mean that everyone in the adversary camps and quite a bit in the media is starting to pant with desparation, given what this irreversible people powered movement is doing re-inventing American puzzle game Politics as we know it with a healthy dose of mights by the people for the poeple.
The Doctor's stature and momentum are ripe giving them a freakin fever trap. I know it's all pissing stuff to read, but it has began to build my confidence about Howard Dean even further deeper. And I bet I am not the only one in the nation.
To me what really matters now is not what these freaks write or say. They are fretting, I just hope they will manage to keep their underpants dry because the heat is just building from this capmpaign.
At rate what really really matters for me is the fact that there still is about 2/3rd of the national electorate WHO'S FACES GO BLANK when they hear mention of the name Howard Dean: they go Howard WHO???? That my friends means that we still have many more mountains to climb both in middle town American and in the minority communities around the country...Ours is the political tsunami of the era, it ought to flood all of America, street by street, county by county, Guerilla combat style.
More than anything else the notion that over 60% of America has never heard of our condidate really matters to me at this juncture. Jusiper work is top gun.
Kerry and the others are responding to the myth that there is something they can say - some meme - that will cause undecided Democrats (and some loosely affiliated Deaniacs) to go, "wait a minute, maybe I'm wrong."
There isn't. It's more than foreign policy, stupid.
He can win but he needs to state repeatedly "I will not lie to the american people." Also, lable the incumbent party as the party of Bankruptcy and Bankrolling--a billion dollars a month (Iraq) a billion point two (Haliburton)- however a more equality to the Palestine-Israel isue
Kerry better be careful. If foreign policy experience is the big deal, I'm switching to Carol Mosely-Braun before I'd go to Kerry. She'd never say mean things about Gov. Dean.
On this website, before we attack the people who attack us for being boorish, and call them clueless and disconnected, we should check our grammar and spelling.
And let's not call Clark supporters freaks.
That said, I think Clark's liability is the fact that he has never been elected by the people to an office. His years of distinguished military service are certainly commendable, and he would make an excellent Democratic counterbalance to Colin Powell, say.
I support Howard Dean for President because he has a clear, proven executive record and a clear, proven track record connecting with voters everywhere. He has a clear plan for moving this country forward, and it isn't bread and circuses by any stretch of the imagination.
The people who have never heard Dean give a quieter, more dignified speech, will see what we all mean when he shifts up into gear very soon.
Gabriel! So glad you brought this up. Welcome back, I've missed your voice here!
I made a point to watch Kerry on MTP yesterday, since I wanted him to explain that war vote. I have the same concern, if being a vet is so important, why/how could you vote for an optional war?
I have to say he did well with our buddy Russert. He's better at weaseling out of questions than Dean was. But I think Russert let him off the hook a bit easier.
Thus I listened intently when he seemed to imply that his war resolution vote was more about getting the inspectors in there and holding Saddam accountable (to trumped-up accusations IMO) than giving the president a blank check to go to war. He said he took the president at his word that he would "go slow." This seemed plausible, and I think he might even believe it.
[Humm, wait a minute. He also said the president doesn't need congress to authorize war, citing clinton's escapades. So why did he have to vote on a resolution to amass troops and start inspections?!]
Given all that, you have to read beyond the rhetoric. A president who had started lying shortly after his residency began, whose word had become to be worth very little as experienced in the 2001 tax cut bill. A president who railed on the UN in their own General Assembly, where it was clear to me that he was all ready for war and everything else was show, especially the inspections. He's the head of an oil-based regime, a Bush for crist stake, you can't trust his word when it comes to murky pronouncements about why we started a war!! His stance was all about creating false reasons for war to hide the real ones.
It comes down to this: how could my congressman, one of my senators, and his own colleague Ted Kennedy read it right and know Bush was pushing bullshit, how could Kerry, as a veteran, believe Bush would "go slow" and not ultimately go to war in a rush? How could all of them, the rest of the world, and Howard Dean see it and he couldn't? AS A VET NO LESS?!!
One answer: running for president. War == strength, and that's all he thinks voters will care about.
Well, as the body bags, bombs, and bills for this optional war keep mounting, this mixture of Nam and Israel he and Bush have created will make his combat experience in Nam look mightly incongruous, as Gabriel pointed out.
If this is what your "vast foreign policy experience" gives you, I want no part of it. Give me someone like Dean who can see through the lies any day. At least Bush has no experience and is surrounded by ideologues and imperialists; if you are so wise what is your excuse, Mr. Kerry? If holding Saddam accountable was the point, why don't we hold Kim Jong Il accountable, Mr. Kerry? How about Mr. Sharon, Mr. Kerry? The Saudis? The Pakistanis? You CAN introduce legislation in the Senate to hold these dirtbags accountable, why don't you? Bush did it and you loved it, so...?
Good luck in front of your ai
Wow I never hit The Limit before! This must mean something... 
The last line is:
Good luck in front of your aircraft carrier, Mr. Kerry, I hope al-qaeda doesn't bomb it.
Kerry says that a lack of international experience is bad in this new, more hostile world?
What, more hostile than when Reagan was elected? You know, I seem to remember there was this thing called the Cold War going on right about then. Is terrorism any more of a threat to our way of life than was communism?
An interesting argument John.
bush visited israel in 1998 and met with sharon, who gave him a tour in a chopper.
Carol Moseley Braun says she has the most international experience of all the candidates.
I guess John Kerry thinks she needs to be president.
hahaha.
Nice post, Ben. Indeed, there are only two ways to understand Kerry's vote for the war. The first is that he's not very smart and was fooled by Bush. The much more likely explanation is that he calculated that voting against the war would label him weak on national security and blow his chances for the presidency. I am very happy to inform him that the reverse is true--it's that vote against the war which has doomed his candidacy in the face of the people's juggernaut that is Howard Dean.
As one of the thousands of people around the world who have been totally enthused by the intelligence and vision of the Dean candidacy and one of the hundreds who have signed up for Meetups in foreign cities, all I can say is that Dean seems to know exactly how to make each and every person in the rest of the free world who hears him think - this is the leader we want. I don't know if it's international experience or just common sense that gives him that gift - but he's got it.
Exactly what image John Kerry thinks he projects to the world standing in front of an aircraft carrier...well, about as positive a one as that clown Bush landing on one. Does Kerry really think this demonstrates his international experience - well, all I know is you couldn't have a more internationally-repugnant symbol right now, so if he's playing to the domestic gallery that regards him killing ARVN troops as some brand of heroism, then he should say so - but not dress it up as any kind of fitness for leading the free world. We can do without another leader who regards offing his fellow human beings as the highest calling.
I am willing to vote for anybody but Bush but I am hoping that Howard Dean will remove the appointed president from office and restore honor and dignity to the electoral process. Don't believe the media hype that Dean is too left, Bush is too far right and we need to expose his fake war, his fake presidency, and his fake intelligence for what it is: Daddy's Boy getting in in 2000 by theft and in 2004 by fear.
Is Kerry indulging in historical revisionism, or did I miss something in his bio? He says:
"I learned something about aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin"
but I thought he was buzzing around the Mekong on a small gunboat.
I saw the Kerry announcement.
Very sad. He was upstaged by a hearing on John Hinckley. His tone was dry, wooden, professorial.
But he did try and do one thing right. That is, he brought in his fellow veterans, men who served with him in Vietnam. The symbolism, in front of the aircraft carrier, was decent.
We need Kerry with us. We need to find a way to unlock the votes of soldiers, military families and veterans.
I don't think Kerry has the answer on this. But I do think in this case he is asking the right question.
So I ask it of all of you. How do we get the military families, the veterans, and our current soldiers over to our side?
What will it take?
After hearing Kerry's speech today, I am less worried than ever about him. He is, to put it simply, a grind. A person without the immagination or charm that produces the kind of crucial magnetism that made the other Kerry who fought in the war, Bob Kerry, so much more compelling --a quality that Howard Dean has in spades.
Every applause line in the "New JFK"'s announcement speech today was forced, with the crowd struggling to lift him rather than the other way around.
When Bush Sr was scaring most Dems with flag-burning in 1989, it was Bob Kerry who went to the floor of the senate and stood up to W's dad. That is the kind of statement john Kerry needed to make on the war. He should have used his war cred to stand up to W on Iraq. He could have galvanized the anti-war movement and put a war hero at it's front. It could have distinguished him as a true "fighter" and endeared him to the Dem base. But taking a chance on this position, rather than doing the safe Washington insider thing, ie, support the war reso, was beyond Kerry's personal capacity. He simply lacks the imagination. I like the idea of a war hero candidate; heck, who wouldn't? But his resume would be subsumed quickly by some Carl Rove trick, like sending members of the National Guard to Kerry rallies to protest Kerry "attacking" service in the Guard, every time he even mildly compared himself the the chickenhawk in chief when it came to actual wartime experience. And as stiff and limited as he is, Kerry would never have a plausible response. Guys like Kerry, Gore, Dukaukis, or Gephardt only change when they are really, really desperate-- and then it is just awful, like listening to Gephardt or Gore "bare their souls" about dead relatives. Or wear something othter than a blue suit. Yuck...(And that's written as someone who supported Gore in '00)
When Bush starts blathering incorherently about Jesus, tax cuts and how he wears cowboy boots in response to a serious question about our failing economy, the growing enviromental mess or our disaster of a foregion policy next fall, I would like to have someone like Howard Dean there to look him in the eye and say how weak and disgraceful that answer is. I don't want to hear a bunch of senatorial sounding blandishments that no one can connect with that Kerry's stock in trade.
Awesome. James, you have captured the real essential differences between the candidates.
let me preface this by saying, once again, that i think deep down john kerry is a good man, and i'll work my butt off to elect him should he become the nominee. that being said...
i am not supporting kerry in the primaries because when we needed him the most, he was nowhere to be found. during the dark months after 9/11, when we were steeped in fear, and the bushes were pushing their extremist agenda through congress - where was john kerry? when the PATRIOT act was passed, where was john kerry? when the war resolution was passed, where was john kerry? not once did he stand up and show any inkling of his supposed leadership qualities! he let us down then and he's letting us down now. when we needed a democrat to lead, kerry was rolling over like most of the other senate democrats, with a white surrender flag up his ass saying "yes sir mr bush - whatever you want mr bush!" other than paul wellstone, roberty byrd, and a few others, i can think of no other democrats who've acted like leaders since 9/11. that is why i do not support kerry now, and why i'll have to hold my nose and vote for him should he become the nominee.
it's about the leadership. i want a candidate who has a fine-tuned bullshit detector. kerry obviously does not possess one, and dean does.
John Kerry's war experience in Viet Nam gives him no credibility in managing US foreign affairs, oh, wait -- George Bush's US foreign policy is war and threats of war.
In his canned prewar statement on the Iraq war John Kerry said that if we were to start a war in Iraq, "...of course we will win".
I guess he didn't learn too much from his Viet Nam experience after all. We didn't "win" that one, and there is no "win" in this one either.
NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH ...
In his announcement speech today Kerry said he voted to "threaten" war in Iraq. Now THERE is a nice bit of revisionist history. Reread Section 3A of the resolution, Me Too Kid, assuming you ever did read it). If you find the word "threaten" in the force resolution, you're not presidential material - you're in line to be a grand exaulted mystic seer, becuase you can see things that don't exist.
To correct the impression some people seem to be under, Kerry's position now is NOT that the Iraq war was/is a mistake, but rather that it was and is the right thing to do! In this he fully supports Bush. His ONLY quarrel is with the lack of post-war (post-war?) plans for the occupation.
My suggestion for a Dean rejoinder to Kerry's attack yesterday: "You're absolutely right, Senator Kerry, I was a Governor not a Senator, so I didn't have the responsibility that you had--either to give the President a blank-check to go to war with Iraq, or to deny him that check until a case could be made AND that we had secured the support of our allies. It seems to me, Mr. Senator, that one might more legitimately call your foreign policy leadership into question. In supporting the President's war-plans, you may fairly be accused of abrogating your responsibilites on a question of the highest possible consequence to our nation."
For those who didn't see it or read the transcript, Kerry went so far as to say to Judy Woodruff: "That he (Dean) would answer you that way (i.e. by referring to his travel abroad and suggesting the positive role such travel would play in the formation of anyone's view of the world and our place in it) PROVES my point (that Dean has "zero foreign-policy experience"). What an anti-intellectual jerkface Kerry showed himself to be. Ugh. I fear more of the same from him tonight. Dean should just stay above the fray, focus on Bush, and have two or three zingers ready for Kerry... (yikes, I'm getting obsessed with this campaign!)
If all the Dem. candidates will continue to conduct themsleves as they did Thursday, there is a chance that Bush can be defeated by one of them; hopefully Dean. Joe L. is a non-starter. He and others will discover that and given time, weed their own ranks before New Hampshire and Iowa. The debate suggested just on the basis of the number of participants indicated that democracy is perhaps salvagable. If it is, it will be just in the nick of time.