Reply #27: Yes, Democrats do hang the dirty laundry out in public [View All]

[Lexingtonian]

As you can tell from the previous comments, our basic problem is the power trip a part of the Dean support is on. These folks have acquired omniscience- e.g. Kerry, whose voting record is far more liberal than Dean's, is "a Republican" or some such excuse which probably translates to 'isn't giving people like ME a power trip' in plain English. This omniscience curiously never admits that Dean consistently comes out worst in polling against Bush of the major candidates, and that Rove prefers them as the evidently least wise of possible opponents.

The sad part of this power trip is that it's far more about taking power away from other Democrats, at least in these stages. (Who ever cared about that malign conspiracy called the DLC before this, when reality always admitted that the DLC is simply about keeping a second party for voters to go to in the South?) And as such this power fixation really is part of the pathology of political disunity and minority status rather than a fix. No other candidate's supporters are so quick to malign others, to assert their group's and their leader's infallibility, or to admit their basic mediocrity, and to pretend to intra-Party entitlement (aka 'revolution').

I certainly hope this authoritarian superiority streak has peaked and breaks down further.

I personally don't expect all the conservative Clark support to stick around until Election Day. But as long as he pries away a significant number of swing voters from Bush who don't fall back, it's a good thing he's in.

But other than that, things are peachy. It's still quite a way to the primaries and I think the acrimony is past its zenith. But we may be through the worst already.