Bobby Kennedy, Howard Dean, and Huffington

Ariana Huffington makes some good points about certain similarities between Bobby Kennedy and Howard Dean. She writes: “Of course Dean is angry. Take a look at what’s happening in Iraq, with another 236 American soldiers killed or wounded since Saddam was dragged out of his spider hole. And take a look closer to home, where we have 12 million children living in poverty, 43 million people without health insurance, 6 out of 7 working poor families unable to afford quality child care, record levels of personal debt, and more and more U.S. jobs being “outsourced” overseas. If you still have a pulse — are you listening Joe Lieberman? — you should be royally pissed.” Aude Lorde once wrote a compelling essay about the the uses of anger, pointing out that anger is a vital emotion in the service of justice. I wish I had her book at hand, so that I quote it, but I’m not in my office at the moment (and I can’t search it inside of Amazon because her publisher didn’t grant them permission to do so). In any case, I think Huffington’s right, as is Helen Thomas, to point out that it’s highly problematic how the Democratic candidates are picking away at Dean, rather than focussing their energy at the core issues we ought to be working on. This election is too important to piss away our energy on internal competitions.