McCain Double Standard Giving Me a Dean Campaign Flashback

by folkbum

Anyone besides me remember this?

MR. RUSSERT: But how many troops--how many men and women do we now have on active duty?

DR. DEAN: I can't tell you the answer to that either. It's...

MR. RUSSERT: But as commander in chief, you should now that. [. . .]

DR. DEAN: So your perception--your position is that I need to know exactly how many people are on duty today in the active military forces...

MR. RUSSERT: Well, have a sense...

DR. DEAN: ...six months away from the first primary?

MR. RUSSERT: If somebody wants to be president of the United States, have a sense of the military.

Does anyone else besides me remember all the crap that Howard Dean took after that, from the GOP, from the media, from conservative warbloggers? The critics were everywhere. I had just started blogging back then and I was neck-deep in the Dean campaign, and it all remains pretty vivid to me.

It's all I've been thinking about the last couple of days after John McCain said, while he was here in Wisconsin, "We have drawn down to presurge levels" in Iraq. We haven't--troop levels there are about 15% higher right now than they were before last summer's "surge."

Look, foreign policy is supposed to be McCain's area of expertise. It's supposed to be the one thing that he knows really, really well. The Iraq war, in particular, is supposed to be McCain's ace in the hole--if anyone can finally win this war, McCain would have us believe, it's him. Yet McCain consistently shows he has no idea what's going on in Iraq, from this latest blunder to having to be corrected by Joe Lieberman about who is funding which insurgents. I respect the fact that he served and that he was a POW in Vietnam. That takes a lot of character and I respect him for that. But he clearly doesn't know what's happening now, not a deep level nor even at the basic level of how many troops we have serving there.

And, as Tim Russert would say, as commander in chief, you should know that.

Why Ron Paul is like Howard Dean

by folkbum

One sad lesson I learned (of many) from the Dean campaign of 2004 is that most candidates have a lot of people who will show their support by giving money, and exponentially more people who show up to vote--or caucus as the case may be. That was not true for Howard Dean, and it will not prove true for Ron Paul.

Dean raised a lot of money from a lot of people, and I'm willing to be that pretty much every single one of those people showed up to vote, but not many more. John Kerry had poor fundraising but made up for it in, you know, actual voters.

Ron Paul's supporters (often willingly blind and deaf to the candidate's racist past, and his otherwise general nuttiness) certainly can raise the money. And I have no doubt that everyone who gives will show up to caucus/ vote/ participate. But Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney aren't raising that kind of cash and will far out-poll Paul everywhere, starting tomorrow in Iowa.

Ron Paul supporters everywhere will learn the same thing in the next few weeks that I learned in 2004.

What I'm Thankful For

• I'm thankful for my wife, my health, my general I-guess-I-don't-have-it-so-badness, and that my family, friends, and coworkers are all pretty much okay this year. My dog's getting crazier, but then I'm thankful we have a good vet and can afford to treat her.
  
  
• I'm thankful that I can afford a turkey and can cook it myself; recent news of rising demand, again, for help feeding families is disheartening.
  
  
• I'm thankful for the job, as much as it stresses me, and the opportunity to try to do a little bit of good in this city. No, I don't expect to change the world one classroom at a time, but if I can make a little difference, that's enough.
  
  
• I'm thankful for those in service to this country, in the military, in the peace corps, or elsewhere, spreading the best of what America has to offer under, often, hellish circumstances and on a mission that was long ago doomed to failure.
  
  
• I'm thankful for the internet, and the people I've met and have come to know well here in the ether (and occasionally in real life). I can't name everyone, so I won't start, but this whole blogging thing has opened up a world of cool and interesting people, on all sides of the divide, that I am glad to know. Add to that the folks at Apple Computer and the cable company that provide this access. The blogging has scored me some TV gigs, and that's worth something; the Governor reads my blog, and that's also not nothing. Some days it scares me a little just how much people are looking to me for advice, opinion, leadership--I mean, I know me--but the opportunities have been tremendous and more than I could have hoped for just writing crank letters to the editor.
  
  
• I'm thankful for Howard Dean and the 50-state strategy. And for Nancy Pelosi. Seriously. Consider:

  Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi will open the House for the first session of the 110th Congress on January 4, and keep it in session for the first several weeks of January. While that may not sound remarkable outside-the-beltway, it is departure from tradition that is certain to prompt some teeth gnashing among Republicans.
  
  Congress typically convenes the first week of January after a holiday recess just long enough for new members to be sworn in, and then promptly adjourns until the president's State of the Union Address toward the end of the month. Pelosi's team apparently figures there's no reason to allow President Bush to set the agenda in January by leaking bits of his speech. Instead the Democratic Congress will immediately plunge into its lengthy to-do list, starting with an ethics reform package, and perhaps have some bills on Bush's desk by the time the State of the Union is ready for delivery.
  
  "From economic security to national security, the American people have resoundingly called for a new direction,'' Pelosi said in a just-released statement. "It is imperative that we waste no time in addressing the pressing needs facing our nation.''

  Contrast that with the Republicans, who put off the annual budget bills until the last minute, and then just skipped out on them altogether. I also love the 100 hours agenda. Expect me to rave more about it later.
  
  
• I'm thankful for good music, a lot of which I've seen and heard this year. New records from Peter Mulvey, Jeffrey Foucault, Mark Erelli, and Ellis Paul, among others. I didn't make it out to Patty Larkin live the other week, but here's a YouTube:
  
  
  
• And I'm thankful for you, my readers. Is it cheesy? Sure. But in almost exactly three-and-a-half years of doing this, I've cultivated a fine audience, a collection of people willing to debate, engage, and explore ideas. The thing that I'm most proud of here is not the TV or undue influence I may someday wield; it's the community. And, after all, isn't that what Thanksgiving is really about?

Enjoy your day, your family, your friends. Be well, eat well, shop carefully, and rest up. Next week, everything starts back up again. Peace.

Misty Water-Colored Memories

by folkbum

A lot of the right Cheddarsphere--and blogosphere as a whole--have been up in arms lately about Howard Dean. I mentioned Dean in the post below, and, if you're a liberal blogger of the same vintage that I am, you probably have some of the same rose-colored memories of those heady days that I do.

I bring this all up because Glenn Greenwald posted yesterday a long excerpt of a Dean speech from February of 2003, a speech in which he made more accurate predictions about what would happen in Iraq than members of the Bush administration ever did.

Which leads me to ask my right-Cheddarspherean friends: Are you so mad at Dean all the time because he was right and you were wrong? I don't know what else explains it . . .

Why I support Howard Dean, and why you should, too
Part IV: A vision for a future America at home and abroad
(Note: a number of things, including a trip out of town for a funeral and this post by Kevin Drum over at CalPundit, necessitate that I post this a little early. Maybe later I’ll bump the date.)

There’s plenty I couldn’t cover yesterday: Howard Dean’s labor-positive attitude despite being from a union-poor state; Dean’s appreciation for and dedication to the environment; his adamant pro-choice stance; I could go on. But today’s installment—our last, as I’m sure you’re relieved to hear—is going to focus on national security and foreign policy issues, and why I think that particular area of Dean’s platform shows Dean where Dean is strongest.

Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager, likes to say, “Let Dean be Dean.” I think that Dean’s Dean-ness is his strongest suit: He is passionate, he is furious about the current state of affairs in this country, his is mightily miffed at others who sat by and let it happen, but—most importantly—he is a pragmatist who, after reflection and consideration, takes the right, if not always expedient, path. It is in Dean’s foreign policy that this is most clear.

Yesterday I went back to my college reading habits. Today, I go back a while before that. Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben told him, channeling Winston Churchill, that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Howard Dean believes that the United States, as the world’s only superpower, has a great responsibility to the world. And a big part of the responsibility is to be, to an extent, a role model.

The Indonesian government invoked the Whopper’s war in Iraq as it invaded Ace recently. That’s not the kind of image we want to present around the world, and Dean has spoken repeatedly against it. I think I need to quote at length:

Our actions are important in themselves, but also as a model for what we may expect--and demand--of other nations. As a result, no country has a bigger stake than we in establishing and enforcing the highest possible norms of international behavior on issues ranging from the release of greenhouse gases to the prosecution of war criminals to the creation of fair worker standards. The Bush Administration does not seem to understand that true leadership requires creating global institutions and arrangements that help lift people's lives, improve prospects for peace, and enhance respect for the rule of law.

Secondly, Dean believes that the president’s actions in Iraq did not show the kind of careful consideration of the situation that something as grave as military intervention involves. I’m sorry, but I do not feel that a president, like the Whopper, who can flippantly declare, “F--- Saddam Hussein. We’re taking him out” is the kind of man whose finger should be on the button. Dean, on the other hand, approaches things from a scientific, research-oriented model. He says, “As a doctor, I was trained to treat illness, and to examine a variety of options before deciding which to prescribe. I worried about side effects and took the time to see what else might work before proceeding to high-risk measures.” On the administration’s run up to the war, he commented, “I was impressed not by the vastness of evidence presented by [Powell to the U.N.], but rather by its sketchiness.” He couldn’t imagine treating a patient with so little useful information.

Third, Dean is not the utter pacifist his unkind or uninformed opponents make him out to be. He has, in fact, called for increases in defense spending, notably to pay for the Homeland Security department that the Whopper opposed, then favored, then underfunded. Dean also recognizes that there is a time and a palce for military conflict: “America may have to go to war with Iraq, but we should not rush into war - especially without broad international support. [. . .] I am not among those who say that America should never use its armed forces unilaterally. In some circumstances, we have no choice. In Iraq, I would be prepared to go ahead without further Security Council backing if it were clear the threat posed to us by Saddam Hussein was imminent, and could neither be contained nor deterred. However,” he said, and I think, especially with hindsight and MIA WMDs, that we can all agree, “that case has not been made, and I believe we should continue the hard work of diplomacy and inspection.” In other words, it was “the wrong war at the wrong time.” Plus, Dean, like many of the rest of us, knows that the Whopper has probably done far more harm than good to our long-term national security interests by acting in violation of world opinion.

Fourth, Dean has expressed what many of us know implicitly, that a strong national security means protecting all of our interests, going far beyond just “defense” spending. Again, I need to quote at length:

The current Administration has defined the concept of national security too narrowly. For example, our failure to develop alternative sources of energy and fuel creates an over-dependence on petroleum imported from the Middle East. As a result, we send billions of dollars every year to countries that are financing radical educational systems that teach young people to hate Christians, Jews and Americans. We learned on September 11 that these schools are prime recruiting grounds for terrorists. America needs an energy policy that stresses conservation and renewable fuels, including ethanol, solar, wind and biomass. Alternative energy sources are practical, economically viable and good for our environment; they are smart national security policy, as well.

More points of fact: Howard Dean is the only candidate (including the Whopper) who put forth a convincing plan for post-war Iraq; he is the only candidate to point out, repeatedly, that North Korea has gone nuclear on this president’s watch; he is the candidate most consistently calling for renewed and re-focused attempts to diffuse al Qaeda.

So, yes, Dean’s lack of experience in federal government puts him at a disadvantage over, say, a Kerry or a Graham. But what other candidate is so passionately and with so much gravity articulating clear and reasoned policies? If we can’t have peace, I at least want to know that the man in the White House will not wage war without giving the question the weight it truly deserves.

Which brings us to the pretty blue bow I promised yesterday to wrap this puppy up with. The biggest question on a lot of people’s minds is not whether they like Dean—most at least don’t hate him—but whether the governor’s “electable.” I say he is, for four reasons:

For starters, his stances on the issues are, without a doubt, not far from mainstream America's. It’s a testament to just how far to the right this administration has skewed (and many congressional Democrats have followed) when by comparison Dean is a raving leftist. (I like raving leftists, by the way—it’s just that they’re the ones who are unelectable!) Dean is a pragmatist, a social progressive, and a believer in fiscal restraint. Who can argue with that?

In addition, Dean is inspiring legions of ground troops right now that no other candidate has. Despite a putative lack of name recognition, Dean is the only candidate with what amounts to a campaign staff in over 400 cities in this country right now. I know; I’m a part of one. Dean’s momentum is growing, and he is proving not to be a mere flash-in-the-pan. With a campaign infrastructure like that, even without DLC or DNC money, he is very well positioned to take on the other candidates and rout Bush in 2004.

Plus, there’s that approach-things-like-a-scientist model. He is not some trigger-happy flight-deck phony, and I like to believe that the American people are smart enough to see that the Whopper’s “common man” approach is really just stupidity.

Finally, his passion comes from his pragmatism, his frustration with others’ complacency, and his firm belief that he has the best vision of a future America. What’s more, that passion translates; he comes off not as “politicky” but as honest, forthright. I don’t think you’ll find him riding around in the Straighttalk Express, but he has that same McCain-esque speaking-his-mind quality. In 2000, McCain was destined to lose, because the machine behind the Whopper was too powerful. Right now, there’s no machine (the DLC is trying) in the race, and anyone has a shot.

I think Dean’s the real thing. You may not, I don’t know, but I hope I at least got you thinking. Let me know. And I apologize for the length of this magnum opus; the four parts still clock in at under 5000 words, though!

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Why I support Howard Dean, and why you should, too
Part III: Healing a house divided—Dr. Dean’s domestic prescription

Yesterday I talked about how I found Howard Dean—I was angry. Today, I’m covering Dean’s policies, and why I think his ideas are the right ones for this campaign.

My senior year of college I read a book that I was certain would change my life. (In college, every book will change your life.) It was Todd Gitlin’s Twilight of Common Dreams, about how identity politics had so fractured the ideological left that there was no cohesive structure to balance or fight the less popular forces of the ideological right. There had been a real time of radicalism, when “the personal is political” transformed the social and political landscape. Now, Gitlin argues, it is too much “only the personal is political.” In other words, gay rights activists are not supporting civil rights groups are not supporting labor unions are not supporting feminists ad infinitum. And we all suffer because of it. Was it Franklin or Twain who wrote, “We all hang together, or surely we’ll all hang separately”?

Howard Dean understands that the left is divided. Howard Dean also understands that the right is using this division, exploiting it, making it worse. “I don't want to be divided anymore by race; I don't want to be divided anymore by gender; and I don't want to be divided anymore by sexual orientation,” he says. And he recognizes that the Whopper is making it worse by supporting class warfare in the form of his budget-busting tax cuts and supporting the case against the University of Michigan law school. The Whopper is dividing us by supporting senator Santorum, and by supporting those who want to have confederate symbols on their state flags. We can do better.

Dean is not the liberal pinko commie that some opponents, like the DLC, make him out to be. In fact, reading through his record in Vermont and his policy statements, I find that he very nicely positions himself as being strong on the issues that rock the liberals’ boats (abortion, gay rights) but more centrist on those issues which conservatives get all het up about (gun control). And I think that’s a far better foundation to run on than someone who automatically irks the left (Lieberman) or the right (Gephardt).

The governor’s biggest issue is now and always will be health care (and I don’t care what you say; I’m an English teacher and health care is now and will always be two words). Dean has credibility on this issue for two reasons: The obvious one is that he is a doctor, and his wife still practices. Call me crazy, but I’d rather have a doctor making health care policy any day than legislators or, worse, insurance companies.

The second thing that gives Dean credibility on the health care issue is his record in Vermont. Now, there are disputes about the actual figures and about how much credit the governor should be allowed to take. But I look at one very important but little-discussed part of his record, for which he is absolutely responsible, and that is the status of children in Vermont.

For starters, every child has health care. Every single one. But that’s nothing—any policy nob can write a few lines into the code to fiddle with CHIPs income limits and Medicaid rules. But what I really love—and what I never, ever see talked about in the media or on the blogs—is Dean’s post-natal care measures.

Every new mother gets a visit in the hospital and home visits two weeks after they leave the hospital. Well over 90% if all Vermont mothers accept these visits and learn, as a consequence, about nutrition and health, reading to their children, and even about housekeeping! As a result, child abuse has fallen by 43% in the 0-6 age group, while sexual abuse in particular is down a whopping 70%. Teen pregnancy rates have dropped more than in almost any other state in the nation, too, all under Howard Dean’s watch.

What does this have to do with health care? Any good doctor will tell you that preventive care is the best care. And by stopping child abuse, instilling good parenting skills in new mothers, and setting a pattern of healthy and healthful behaviors (not to mention universal health care coverage of children), Vermont is securing a healthy and safe future. The rest of us should be so lucky. But if we can make the national debate over health care focus on such important issues as preventive care, then we are making real progress.

I should also note that I like Dean’s “work to get everyone in the system and then fix the system” approach to health care as opposed to, say, Gephardt’s or Kucinich’s plan, as Dean’s plan can be implemented now, not after years of work building a new system.

But health care is just the tip of Dean’s iceberg. I’m trying to limit myself to less than a thousand words for each section of this series, so my next three items will all be brief, but they bear further research if you’re still not convinced.

First of all, Dean is right on the money—literally—when he says that “[t]he President's tax cuts are part of a radical agenda to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, and our public schools through financial starvation.” Right now Dean is the only candidate willing to say what we in Blogland have known for years. Dean balanced a budget for five terms in the Vermont statehouse, putting money aside, even, for when another Bush came along to cause another recession. He knows that a balanced budget is what guarantees social justice: You can’t fund justice with no funds at all.

On Civil Unions, much has been made about the fact the Dean did not make this for himself but had it thrust upon him. It’s true: Vermont’s supreme court pretty much told the elected officials in Burlington they had to do something. But Dean, as he does with most things, approached the situation with thought and research, and, despite widespread (60%+) opposition, took CU’s on. He has since become an eloquent defender of the concept—no zealot like the convert, they say—and wonders why Vermont should be the only state where all Americans are guaranteed the same rights as others.

Finally, a subject that cuts close to home for me but which, for the sake of brevity (I’m long past 1000 words), I can only do a paragraph on: Education. The schools are run at the state and local level, and no one knows better how to fund education than people who have been doing it all along—those who have occupied the state legislatures and statehouses. Now, the Whopper’s No Child Left Untested bill may not have been the worst bill ever if the Whopper had ponied up the money to pay for everything he wants schools to do. I can speak from experience that Milwaukee is losing more than 600 employees next year, about half teachers, in part because of new federal mandates about where and how we spend money. The district’s summer school program has been gutted, leaving thousands of kids who otherwise would have been learning on the streets with nothing to do. And what’s worse, is that the program is designed to designate, eventually, every single public school as a failure! In fact, next year, depending on where you live, you could find up to 75% of the schools in your area labeled as failures, maybe more. Who benefits from calling otherwise perfectly good public schools failures? If you said the religious right and their unconstitutional voucher schemes, go to the head of the class.

Tomorrow: Foreign policy, national security, and I wrap it up with a pretty blue bow.

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Why I support Howard Dean, and why you should, too
Part II: The angry factor

Yesterday I tried to explain why I, and bloggers in general, have already adopted a candidate. Today, I will expand on the idea that we're angry and why Howard Dean nicely addresses it.

How can you not be angry? How can you see the news and not be angry? How can you hear George (the W stands for "Whopper!") Bush lie about his tax "cut" and not be angry? How can you listen to confirmation after confirmation that we were lied to about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and not be angry? How can you see time after time that the Whopper allocates far less than he promises to pay for programs solely designed to make him seem less like the mean-spirited fool he is, from fighting AIDS in Africa to No Child Left Untested, and not be angry?

I have a hard time believing that all those people who voted for the Whopper in order to vote against the outrages of the Clinton administration can remain so complacent about the outrages of the present administration. Even on the right-wing blogs that I mentioned yesterday, there is no outrage at the massive fraud and deception that has been perpetrated by this government. Maybe the American people just expect a certain level of fraud from MBA's or Republicans in general. If that's true, then it may be worse than I thought.

Because the Whopper's lies and indiscretions are far, far more insidious than any hanky-panky or questionable financial deals from Clinton. (Although it has been well documented how there was never any substance to accusations against the Clintons in Whitewater.) When Bill Clinton lied about Monica Lewinsky, he really discredited himself, which is too bad. But when the Whopper lied about Iraq, Americans (and Britons and Iraqis) died.

Repeat after me: Bush Lied, People Died. (Props to Pat K. and probably others, at the Daily Kos's comment boards for the slogan.)

In short, after all of this and so much more, how can you not stand up and say, as Howard Dean famously does, "I want my country back!"

It was Dean's speech to the DNC in February that first attracted me to him. His use of Wellstone's "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" line intrigued me--being from Wisconsin, I have a great affinity for Wellstone, and Wellstone East, also known as Russ Feingold. I was also drawn in by Dean's opposition to the Iraq war, and not because Dean is an utter pacifist, but because the man articulated a reasonable and reasoned foreign policy, whereby diplomacy, international cooperation, and the consideration of actual--as opposed to imagined--threats to America and Americans are the guiding principles, not some desire for empire that seeps from neocons in the administration.

Dean's tag line then--and it still is one of his best--was "We can do better." And you know what? We can. A potted plant would be better than the Whopper. I mean, potted plants can?t send American citizens to die under false pretenses. Remember, Bush Lied, People Died.

So right now, Dean is the angry candidate. I don't think anyone will deny that. I mean, I don't see anyone who is as angry as I am jumping up and down over Joe Lieberman and Carol Mosely-Braun. (I'm not slamming them, by the way--their respective records of public service speak for themselves, but they lack the demeanor that gets people all het up.) Right now, Dean is making it happen, though; we are jumping up and down. Al Sharpton can pull it off, as can Kicinich and maybe Edwards. But Dean has, by and large, locked up the angry vote right now.

Don't underestimate the angry vote, either. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the people who voted for the Whopper really voted against Clinton--as personified by Gore in 2000--because they were angry.

And, more importantly, the angry vote is making people politically active. In 2000, people who voted for Nader did so because they were angry in equal measure with the Republicans and the Democrats. But the Nader voters were also in large part activists. I was not active in the 2000 election, partly because, though I think Gore would have been a good president, especially if he'd been allowed to just be Al Gore, he never did a thing to motivate me. I mean, I was motivated to beat the Whopper, but I need to be for something, not just against something.

Time and time again I meet people who are just discovering Dean, and they all say very similar things: "I've never been active in politics before," is usually how it goes. Well, neither have I, but after what happened in 2000, I could no longer sit idly by. My anger made me do something, and since I didn't have the wherewithal to stage a coup (you know, I didn't have the Supreme Court behind me), I decided instead to become an activist.

Will Dean be able to go to November 2004 with just the angry vote? I doubt it. But it's helping him win the early primary--the one for activists and donors that I wrote about yesterday. Tomorrow, I will talk about Dean's policy positions, and why, even though I was first attracted to Dean because of the angry, I have become so much more convinced that he is the real thing.

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Why I support Howard Dean, and why you should, too
Part I: Why so early?

The 2004 presidential election is like forever away from now, you’re thinking, so how come this guy has already picked a horse to bet on? In this mixed-up world of Blogland, so many people have already settled on favorites, which, to the casual observer, might seem premature. But I think it actually makes perfect sense at this stage for so many of us to be on board a particular candidate’s wagon train.

So today, before I get into the nuts and bolts of my support for Howard Dean, I present three reasons why I—and other bloggers—have already lined up behind a candidate.

1. Bloggers are, by nature, early adopters. Now we find out it applies to presidential candidates as well as technology trends. I think bloggers are the type, by and large, to get excited about new things, to research new ideas thoroughly if quickly, form conclusions, and jump into new movements way ahead of the rest of the world.

And when bloggers jump, they do not equivocate; when was the last time you read a blogger saying, “Gee, um, gosh, I don’t know about this, uh, I have to think about it for a while"? Blogging has done for opinion-writing what email did to letter writing. Where once upon a time, writing to someone was a chore that required careful thought, a couple of good pens, and a stack of pretty stationery, now we have email, which most of us dash off without a second thought or, God forbid, proofreading for typos (heck, instant messaging has normed typos!). Once upon a time a columnist or commentator would ponder the world and take the time to write 700 words, the re-write it and revise it, and send it in, where an editor would work on it, too. Now, though, blogger has thought, blogger types thought, blogger posts thought; elapsed time: 9 minutes.

Which brings us back to the campaign: The bloggers are early adopters of their candidates and, by virtue of their quick-post nature, they are also adamant defenders of their candidate.

Howard Dean, as the candidate most wisely using the internet right now, is therefore making the most inroads with bloggers. Sure, other candidates have bloggers in their corners, but spend a day surfing from liberal blog to liberal blog (come on, it’s what I do!) and you’ll see that Dean is very well represented.

I should say, before I move on to point two in this post, that I actually came to blogging backwards. I found Howard Dean first (that’s all explained in Part II of this series) and then found blogs. I mean, I knew about blogs, but the extent of the blogging world surprised me and drew me in. So, unlike other bloggers who convert to Howard Dean, I was a Deanista who converted to blogging.

2. The Democratic primary fight at this point is not actually a fight for the hearts and minds of Joe and Joann Democrat. Yes, Joe and Joann will need to be on board in order for any one candidate to have a shot, but right now, no candidate is doing the one thing that appeals most to Joe and Joann: Television. Word on the street is that Edwards may be planning TV, but the word on other parts of the street is that Edwards is on his way out of the campaign.

Without television, there’s no one learning about the candidates except people who want to find out, and they are the ones the campaigns are after. There is time later to sway the others, but the primary fight right now is for activists, campaign staff, big-money donors, and high-profile endorsements. We in Blogland fit neatly into the first of those categories, but less so into the last three (oh, to be in the last two!). So in Blogland, we’re starting to line up behind the candidates we like, and, as we are not Joe and Joann Democrat, it’s okay.

3. Finally, liberal bloggers are angry. Remember talk radio in the 90s? Who am I kidding, talk radio hasn’t changed a bit. Notice how angry the right-wing talkers are, and especially try to remember the ferocity with which they attacked Clinton during his presidency. Well, blogging is our talk radio. There is no outlet for our rage at the present administration except for the internet. Look around TV. Listen to your radio. Check your daily papers. There’s nothing! And that’s why we’ve taken refuge in Blogland.

But, you may ask, don’t the conservatives blog too? And aren’t they also angry? Yes, it’s true, and, though I don’t fool around much with the right shore of Blogland, reports I’ve read indicate that it’s a bigger territory than we liberals have carved out. But the key point is that the left shore of this Blogland is growing, and I think—no, I’m pretty sure I know—that we are angrier. Part of that may be, I admit, that we have a narrow, focused target, which is what the right-wingers had during the Clinton and years and what they really lack now. But whatever the reason, our anger and discontent is growing.

Tomorrow: More on the angry factor

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