Reply #4: Dean is the only candidate that can reframe the debate [View All]

[dd123]

I loved these paragraphs from TAP:

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/11/tomasky-m-11-14.html

"I think most pundits have gotten Dean wrong, and continue to miss the point, for one simple reason: They think too much about ideology. Political writers seek ideological explanations first. It's understandable; it's how we think. So, Dean's success must be about his opposition to the war.

Obviously true in part. But it actually explains little about Dean's somersault over his competitors. It has become apparent in recent weeks -- to pundits and to Deaniacs -- that Dean is no flaming liberal at all. He's pro-Second Amendment. Gephardt has whacked him, with some justification, on Medicare. Dean has spoken openly of courting voters who like the Confederate flag. Finally, he broke what is arguably the cardinal rule of effete political liberalism by opting out of the campaign-finance system.

And yet, none of these revelations has furrowed the brow of the Deaniacs one whit. And they haven't because Dean's appeal is not chiefly ideological.

He's the only one of the Democratic nine who is what sports commentators would call an "impact player." He understands how to make an impact on people. He thinks big. He saunters into battle without fear -- and sometimes with less judgment than one might prefer, but even that helps make him interesting. Notice how he managed to prevent his refusal to accept public financing from turning him into a plaything of the fat-cats, instead converting it into yet another glorious manifestation of his ingenuity and his sacred connection to the people.

See him with a crowd and it's not hard to glean the basis of that connection. At the endorsement event, his speech (pretty much his standard stump speech) was about American history, the political culture today and, most of all, the people in the room. Scarcely two sentences were devoted to himself. In an age when Clinton-imitating pols ache to cull the life-shaping events from their past to establish the perfect bio, Dean does none of that. The impact he has on people when he speaks to them is bio enough. "