On trail, Dean hones a populist message

[dkf]

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/11/26/on_trail_dean_hones_a_populist_message/

As a presidential contender, Howard Dean has made a name for himself as a verbal rough-rider -- arguing his case against the war in Iraq and President Bush's tax cuts with the kind of unstinting rhetoric that has won over Democrats eager to see a bruising battle against Bush next fall.

But on the campaign trail, Dean's throw-down-the-gauntlet mantra is woven with another message, one strikingly different in tone, that preaches the virtue of community and the evil of corporate behemoths unconcerned, he says, with the collective good.

"Bigger and bigger corporations might mean more efficiency, but there is something about human beings that corporations can't deal with, and that's our soul, our spirituality, who we are," Dean told a breakfast crowd in Sidney, Iowa. "We need to find a way in this country to understand and to help each other understand that there is a tremendous price to be paid for the supposed efficiency of big corporations. The price is losing the sense of who we are as human beings."

snip

In some ways, it is a dialectic drawn from Dean's biography, one punctuated by his frequent rejections of the big and hierarchical. The wealthy scion of a long line of Manhattan power brokers, Dean fled a short-lived stint on Wall Street for a career in Vermont as a small-town doctor. He embraced Congregationalism in place of Episcopal tenets with which he was raised. He frequently cites his experience as a college student in the 1960s as a major influence on his thinking, saying it was a time of hope and promised -- if unrealized -- equality.

[Jacobin]

1. This needs to be said desperately

Dean is on to something here....I think it will resonate with those who have been tossed aside like so much flotsam by corporate america....those people now number in the tens of millions.

[ozymandius]

2. Millions effected by the "new economy" cannot be ignored.

Although there will always be people who descriminate against themselves, how many will react to the loss of dignity that accompanies a devastating job loss being trumpeted as economic boom?

Dean understands this. Too many others in the Democratic field pretend to understand and pretend to sympathize. I see these other contenders merely parrot the same message that was popular twelve years ago. And they have the audacity to call this progress!

[Bandit]

7. Trouble is most of those effected don't vote

We need to push for vote by mail. If we don't we are screwed blued and tatooed. We need to get people to vote and the only way that is proven to increase voter turnout dramatically is vote by mail. Use Oregon as an example. Last election they had eighty percent turn-out. What other state even came close? It is definitely something positive we could work towards.

[cryofan]

3. DEAN == FAUX POPULIST

Dean is nobody's populist, except maybe the rich investor's populist, or the globalist corporation's populist. The investors and the CEO's trust Dean because they know his background, and his background is very much the same as George W. Bush's background: blueblood, silver-spoon, privileged, "fortunate son," etc. Hell, Dean even went to Yale at the same time as Bush.

[Zynx]

4. Whatever.

That would be why they are pouring millions into his campaign. What? They aren't? But, but!

I should have expected as much from a Kucinich supporter.

[sangh0]

11. Is Bush* a populist?

Bush* is also getting millions poured into his campaign.

[cryofan]

16. Dean represents another "Run of the Brahmins"?

HYPOTHESIS: DEAN =~ BUSH

THE EVIDENCE:


From :http://www.counterpunch.org/colby02222003.html

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Meet Howard Dean. The Man from Vermont is Not Green (He's Not Even a Liberal) by MICHAEL COLBY For Vermonters who have seen Howard Dean up close and personal for the last eleven years as our governor, there's something darkly comical about watching the national media refer to him as the "liberal" in the race for the Democratic nomination for president. With few exceptions in the 11-plus years he held the state's top job, Dean was a conservative Democrat at best. And many in Vermont, particularly environmentalists, see Dean as just another Republican in Democrat's clothing.

As the son of a wealthy Long Island family (his father was a prominent Wall Street insider), <b> Dean's used to having his golden path well greased. </b> After dutifully attending Yale and then medical school, Dean looked for a state to launch both a private medical practice and a political career. He chose Vermont as much for its beauty as its lenient mood toward carpet bagging politicians, thus joining Brooklynite Bernie Sanders as a born again Vermonter.

Dean became Vermont's accidental governor in 1991 after Governor Richard Snelling died of a heart attack while swimming in his pool. Dean, the lieutenant governor at the time, took the state's political reins and immediately followed through with his promise not to offend the Snelling Republicans who occupied the executive branch. And Dean carried on with his right-leaning centrism for the next eleven, long years.

With his sights now set on the White House, the Dean team has been doing its best over the last year to polish up a mediocre gubernatorial record. They're also trying to position Dean as "the liberal" in the Democratic field so as to grab the much-coveted early primary voters.
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From http://www.citizinemag.com/politics/politics-0309_antibush_dean.htm


by R. McFadden Howard Dean describes himself as an "outsider" in his run to be elected US President in 2004. But months before the New Hampshire and Iowa primaries, this pretended outsider has already gathered more money than any other candidate (with more than $10 million in private donations) and he is the undisputed front runner to challenge George W. Bush to the presidential crown.


The Center for Public Integrity describes Howard Dean's blueblooded youth: Dean was born into a wealthy New York family in 1948. The oldest of four brothers and the son of a wealthy, conservative stock broker, he grew up in the Hamptons and the Upper-East side where he attended elite private schools. In 1967 he entered Yale University. While at Yale, Dean discovered that he had an innate sympathy for the civil rights movement and the plight of the poor. He steered clear of radical protests and student demonstrations, later saying that he “instinctively distrusted ideologues,” but he also came to oppose the escalating Vietnam War.

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From

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/981758/posts

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If you were to pick a presidential candidate on the basis of social standing — and really, darling, who doesn't — you'd have to pick Howard Brush Dean III over George Walker Bush. The Bush lineage is fine. I'm not criticizing. But the Deans have been here practically since Mayflower days and in the Social Register for generations. It's true Bush's grandfather was a Wall Street financier, a senator and a Yale man, but Dean's family has Wall Street financiers going back to the Stone Age, and both his grandfathers were Yale men.

The Bush family properties were in places like Greenwich, Conn., and Kennebunkport, Me., which is acceptable, but the Dean piles were in Oyster Bay, on Hook Pond in East Hampton and on Park Avenue, a list that suggests a distinguished layer of mildew on the family fortune.

Again, I'm not suggesting the Bushes are arrivistes. <b> Howard Dean's grandmother asked George Bush's grandmother to be a bridesmaid at her wedding</b>, and she wouldn't have done that if the family were in any way unsound. I'm just pointing to gradations. <b>Dean even went to a slightly more socially exclusive prep school, St. George's, while Bush made do with Andover before they both headed off to Yale. </b>

On the other hand, both boys have lived along parallel tracks since they went out on their own. Both went through their Prince Hal phases. Bush drank too much at country clubs. Dean got a medical deferment from Vietnam and spent his time skiing in Aspen. Both decided one night that it was time to get serious about life and give up drinking. Dean was 32; Bush was 40.

....

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Therefore DEAN =~ BUSH in many respects!


Q.E.D.

[dean4america]

5. for the record

Dean was a Freshman when Bush was a Senior -- you make it sound like they were drinking buddies.

[Jacobin]

8. I like to follow the money instead of disparaging someone

gratuitously because of their parentage. FDR was obviously a blue blood as were the Kennedys. They did good things for this country.

Dean's contributions are NOT from corporate america. They are from millions of people like me who send him $100 when we can.

Why is this ignored by Kucinich supporters?

[JohnKleeb]

15. No its not his background

His record wasn't what you would call populist, I am not saying he's a bad guy, but I am saying he wasn't a populist as governor. I don't find Dean to be corporate much, I think the most corporate candiate in the race is likely Lieberman in my opinion. Sigh sucks being too young to donate legally to a campaign, I give when I can.

[mrgorth]

9. Ignore this response

Dean realized that simply helping others make money without working didn't satisfy his soul. So he became a doctor and moved to a small Vermont town (small compared to other east coast capitals). He got into politics to help build a bike path on Lake Champlain. Look, I love Dennis Kucinich and think he has great ideas. I like Dean a little better and will vote for him. You shouldn't, however, overlook the fact that if Dennis leaves the primaries you have another option that is close. Please ignore this and continue comparing Dean to Satan. Thank you.

[Scott Lee]

12. And Lenin went to Switzerland for awhile to write - your point?

I guess Lenin was a faux socialist because he enjoyed a few lattes in a Swiss cafe while going over his writings.

Thanks for your input. (fzzzzzzZOINK)

[Rose Siding]

6. What an amazing article

An actual Christian's response to Dean (less inclusive than it could be, I guess, but a definite eye opener):

snip>
"I love that talk about community because we are supposed to be a Christian nation, and if we are a Christian nation, I have to be concerned about you, I have to be concerned about him," said Paul McFarland, 62, a retired military man who listened to Dean at an Ottumwa VFW Hall. "That's the way God wanted it, that's what a Christian nation is all about and we have strayed away from that."

And the hook for Trippi was the same as for me:

snip>
Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, insists Dean's call for community is not a message dreamed up by political consultants. "He was talking about how we had lost a sense of community in this country," Trippi recalled of a talk Dean gave in Iowa last spring, one he said propelled him to sign on to the campaign. "How it's not good enough for me to want health care for my kid. We as Americans have a responsibility to fight for every kid in this country to have health insurance."

Dean points to a visit of his own to Iowa as the genesis of the theme, recalling the eureka moment at a recent brunch with reporters, "I couldn't believe that here was this solid group of Iowans and they are not ranting and raving . . . about evil corporations. They were just calmly telling me the underpinnings of their lives were collapsing under them.

"There was a fundamental fear for the future. They felt that American corporations weren't American anymore and the people they work for didn't value them. They could move their jobs anywhere in the world for the bottom line. It was a complete revelation to me."
end snip>

And I love the throwaway shot at the "faux phony family values the president talks about"

[redqueen]

10. These are encouraging words

Please don't lump all Kucinich supporters together. I was originally a Dean supporter.

These sentiments are wonderful but I don't know how they fit together with his enthusiastic support of corporations (e.g. IBM) while Gov of Vermont. :shrug:

[Rose Siding]

13. They were the largest employer in the state

so there was certainly a need to support them in some ways. I find plenty of "Dean- no friend to business" articles in VT papers, so there appears to have been have been some balance.

Distrust for corps, the realization of the harm being done to the very fabric of society here and the power they hold in govt hasn't always been an issue that mainstream voters were concerned about. Now there is an opportunity to at least face the problem-

*Some can read: opportunistic, if inclined- I don't care, as long as its addressed.

[killbotfactory]

14. If they weren't breaking the law or doing something bad...

What's the problem?