| The end of the affair |
[Feb. 18th, 2004|08:45 am] |
So Wisconsin, which Howard Dean once said he'd have to win to stay in the race, has voted - and put him a distant third. He's off home to think about his next move but, realistically, however you look at it, his campaign is all over bar the shouting.
There could be quite a bit of that, though, since Super Tuesday features his home state of Vermont, and California where's he's always looked relatively strong. He's also, despite everything, still second in the count of delegates so far earned.
John Edwards, however, is surging at exactly the right moment. I can't say that fills me with excitement, although he's better than Kerry. We can but hope he'll name Dean as his VP - that would make life interesting.
I'm looking back and trying to understand why I got so enthusiastic about Dean. Sure, I'm a politics junkie and I find the Bush administration abhorrent (seen its latest plans to demand the medical records of some women who had abortions?). But I was pretty much giving up on politics at the time Dean was rising to prominence. And, of course, I'm over here in England.
I guess really it's down to this: people are cynical about politicians and our seemingly total inability to give a straight answer to a straight question. We worry all the time about electability and saying the wrong thing to the media and all that sort of thing, and pretty soon the idealism that got us involved in the first place is squashed by necessity and caution. None of that seemed to apply to Dean - he just said it like he saw it, and to hell with the consequences. In his case the consequences included five successful re-election campaigns as Governor of Vermont, so he was clearly doing something right. I was impressed, and I was jealous - I wish I'd done more of that when I was a Parliamentary candidate and local party chair instead of getting bogged down in the little stuff.
And I wasn't the only person to get swept up - from time to time you actually see Dean icons on LiveJournal, along with all the Harry Potter and Pirates of the Carribean ones. How unlikely is that? Can you imagine anyone making or using a John Kerry icon? Please...
Here's a quote from the comments on the Daily Kos, from an Arizona voter who got swept up in the Dean Thing, that sums it up."In my urgency to work toward Bush's removal, I found a candidate who was bluntly honest (i.e. not trying to feed me a load of bull to get my vote), courageously called out Bush & Co. because it was how he felt, not because he had decided it was politically safe, had a fantastic record to back up the issues he brought to the table, and seemed sincere about wanting only to be answerable (financially and otherwise) to ordinary citizens. At the time, it felt like a friggin' miracle.
"Now what? The urgency to remove Bush remains, but it now feels like the same old tired BS." The BBC says this:"The Dean message has won the primary. He focussed minds of all the candidates on what the Democratic voters wanted to hear.
"Other candidates have taken his message and refined it.
"All that is left for Mr Dean is to decide how and when to make a graceful exit." I guess so. But until he does, I'm keeping the icon on my user profile. |
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