DEAN POLL

[rucky]

Howard Dean...

No "other" category. Just pick the one that best fits your thoughts on the matter.

[gaia_gardener]

1. I need a link to the full comments

the comment about "white christian" is right-on (except he left out male).

Other comments that I've read about (but not the actual comments) having to do with "honest living" or "hard working" may be less accurate, but I have to know what they are to form an opinion.

[rucky]

2. that's just crazy talk...

asking for source material before forming an opinion.

You'll never get to call into C-Span with that kind of attitude.

:silly:

[gaia_gardener]

3. Isn't that the truth?

How dare I want to hear all sides of the issue. That must mean I'm a "damn liberal". (Or as my mom tells me "I don't love my country").

[Spiffarino]

4. Off-topic, but...

...your William Hung avatar is freakin' awesome.

[rucky]

11. thanks! n/t

[Bucky]

5. If the message is that the Republicans serve a narrow interest, he's right

The problem is that we're in a position where we can quibble and dicker over what his real message was. The tone of it was racially divisive and sends a signal that that's the filter through which the Democrats filter the world. While the Republicans are working hard to diversify their party's voting base, the top Democrat is playing a stale race card.

How much stronger that message would have been if he'd framed it in terms of inclusion to the American dream or used the time to point out how the GOP is blowing it on healthcare, fiscal sanity, foreign policy, Social Security, and the social safety net. Instead he drags the conversation into the mud with distracting chatter about race. This type of exchange alienates far more moderates than the number of new progressive votes it might attract.

The best of politicians are uniters. Dean still hasn't shown he can be like that.

[Lexingtonian]

17. nah

If Howard Dean says the Republican Party is the party of white privilege and Christian privilege (and the privileges given wealth), I have no idea why to back away from that statement. The Republican Party is exactly that.

Every white Democrat who attends a church knows that a Republican clique claims to own the church and the religion, but they are badly- horrifyingly- deficient Christians and generally racist and otherwise unChristian at some perceptible level. When Howard Dean uses the phrase 'white Christian' he doesn't need to add the adjectives 'racist' or 'paganized'. Every church is polarized, and everyone knows what the hardcore Republican side is and is like. Being a moderate Republican is almost as bad as being a Democrat.

Dean's job is to drive the last incorrigible conservatives out of the Party and take in moderates from the GOP. I think this sort of thing does the job just fine- even if people disagree, it gets the ones who haven't been paying attention thinking and eventually past the silly ego-offended state. And it's the right job. You may not think it's working, but it is. After three to four years, Democrats and Independents are nearly entirely in irreversible policy opposition to hardline Republicans. The center of the argument about present hardline Republican policy has progressed from Left to Right, now reaching moderate Republicans. The slow, progressive, process of rejection of it piece by piece has begun. Dean is now part of the game of provocations and fuelling dissent, of getting the process going.

[Rowdyboy]

6. I wish Howard Dean would raise absolute hell about

the Downing Street memo
the debacle in Iraq
our enormous, economy-killing deficit
BBV
packing the courts with radical activists
Health Care
Minimum Wage which hasn't gone up in 8 years

Why not say that republicans are "extremist religious fanatics", not "white Christians"? Most Americans don't like the idea of religious extremists but they consider themselves white Christians.

He has the passion but he doesn't seem to be able to control it and channel it effectively. I really hope he can get it together and do it soon because we really don't need to divert media attention with some kind of chickenshit debate about Republicans being "white Christians". It makes us look like fools.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. We should not be getting weirded out by the white christian thing.

It's the republicans who should be getting weirded out by it, because it points at the very real gap between reality and their proclaimed 'big tent'.

Can they object to 'white christian' as if it was an insult? No.

Can they seriously claim that it isn't true? Just look at the pictures from their convention -- one in three of the people on stage were people of color, while one in fifty in the crowd below were people of color. And don't you think that the convention was significantly over-represented with their minorities, knowing they'd be on TV? Image is everything, after all.

[Guaranteed]

7. Take note, DLC whores. nt

[LincolnMcGrath]

9. Choke on this DLCers

4 out of 5 support Dr. Dean

[For PaisAn]

10. Go Dean

Was Right On in Both Message and Tone, hell yes.

[Straight Shooter]

12. I'll let the little man in my sig line do the talking.

[EFerrari]

13. We got our fighter. Now, let's deserve him.

:kick:

[JRob]

14. If the RW doesn't like his message. send mine...

[deacon]

15. Dean's got spine--screw the GOP--match their outrageous comments

with any one of his and Dean is being gentle.

[Zinfandel]

16. Kick...

:kick: :smoke: