Now the Dems attack Dean

You know, I haven’t been paying much attention to national party politics. Frankly, I’ve been too busy dealing with things locally, and I’ve been too depressed about the way things are going nationally (particularly around GITMO and other torture and rendition issues) and the way the Dems aren’t doing much about it, to care.

But it seems that Howard Dean recently made some statements strong enough to rile people up a bit, and some Dems feel a need to distance themselves. Good for Howard Dean! I know that might sound a bit foolish, but as the RudePundit puts it (and the whole post has some obscene language, so don’t read it if that kind of thing bothers you):

"Look, Dean's the party chair. His job is to raise money, rally the troops, and bring people into the party. His success or failure is measured in bank accounts and mailing lists. And he's a failed presidential candidate. The party establishment could have tossed him out to the exile pile with Al Gore, who keeps making amazing, passionate, intelligent speeches with all the impact of a fly fart at a System of a Down concert. But instead, the Democratic power elite decided to use Dean and his grassroots army of e-mail savvy warriors to regain relevance. They knew what they were getting. And if Dean becomes the lightning rod, so much the better for whoever is running in 2008.

Besides, ain't it fun to watch Hannity and Coulter and Gingrich and Hume and all the other hate-filled sociopaths flail about and try to take Dean down? You've seen Dean's arms? Big, thick sons of *****. He can bear it. And he can throw it back at them. As long as those behind him don't put him in handcuffs.

Fortunately, not all of the national Dems are without any kind of courage or integrity. John Edwards, bless his sanity and communicativeness, didn't see any need to distance himself from Dean (contrary to what the media reported):

"We are both talking about the Republicans and their failure to address the needs of working people. We both agree with this basic truth: This Republican president and this Republican majority are not doing what they should be doing for working people in this country. That’s a core belief we need to fight for. And what’s more, we agree that we - all Democrats and all working people - should be complaining, criticizing, and generally speaking out about this critical failure of the Republican party and offering our positive vision for America. And we have.

Howard and I have been saying the same thing about this for years. Hear that? The same thing. For years. Have I ever put it some way that Howard wouldn't agree with? Probably. And he put it in a way, once, just the other day, that I can’t agree with, since I come from a place where hard-working people, who are better served by the agenda and passion of the Democrats, somehow still vote Republican. But Howard and I are committed to a 50-state strategy that will reach out to those voters, in North Carolina, and in Kansas, and in Tennessee, across this country and tell the truth about what is happening in this country to their jobs, to their health care, to their forests and streams, to their vision of what this country is and should be.

I wish the currently elected Dems would start taking some chances. If the only people we get any real truth from are "failed" candidates -- Al Gore has said some good stuff recently -- then perhaps it's time to follow the failures and keep our integrity. Caving in to the right wing in an attempt to remain "electable" is a failing strategy in a time when the house is burning down. We need to get the children out of the house, and work on putting out the fires -- tasks that will have to be done at the grassroots resistance level, since our national party politicos seem to have no ability to take a stand.