Howard Dean and the Iowa Primary

posted to www.marxmail.org on January 21, 2004

A Lexis-Nexis search for articles that contain the words "Howard Dean" and "angry" within the past 3 months produced 494 hits.

Going into the Iowa primary, the label "angry" had reached a critical mass. It probably was one of the factors that made the largely white, religious and rural Democratic voters shy away from him. They would seem to prefer somebody bland like John Kerry. In addition, the national media has done everything it can to marginalize the actual politics of the candidates and focus on "electability", expressed in terms of a horse race. Last night the always droll Jon Stewart spent five minutes ridiculing CNN, MSNBC, Fox TV and other cable news outlets whose pre-caucus coverage revolved around questions like "If 'a' comes in first, how will that effect 'b' in the New Hampshire primary".

Now that Dean has come in third in the first primary, the media smells blood and won't be happy until he is out of the race. Yesterday morning I was treated to practically simultaneous send-ups of Dean's by now infamous "whooping" speech in Iowa on AM rightwing talk radio. Telling his assembled followers that they should push ahead with the other primaries, he concluded with a guttural shout that sounded like something you would hear in a football stadium--in other words, a routine business for a presidential campaign. But in the spotlight, it turns into something else. The Boston Globe reported today:

Then he let out a yell that appeared part growl, part yodel - which television networks and talk radio played over and over yesterday. Critics said the moment would be fodder for rivals' commercials for weeks. Some went further, calling it a potentially defining moment of the campaign.

"He didn't do himself any favors," said Dante Scala, a professor at St. Anselm College in Manchester and author of "Stormy Weather," a book about the New Hampshire primary. "That moment crystallizes a lot about what's been said about him, that he's the angry man."

I haven't seen this kind of ganging up mentality since Jesse Jackson ran for President in 1984. When Jackson referred to New York City as "hymietown", the press never let him or the American people forget it. Although Jackson was--despite all the rhetoric--a loyal Democratic Party functionary (as is Dean), he made the mistake of being too uppity. The big business core of the Democratic Party had no use for a black man relying on an independent base of African-American and leftist youth to win support among the broader population.

Sam Smith of the Progressive Review has some interesting comments on the anti-Dean backlash in the media, which is really being orchestrated by the newspaper publishers who are close to the centers of power in the USA.

DEAN'S PROBLEMS - Dean is in trouble, no doubt of it. Primary cause is the most excessive and gratuitous media assault on a presidential candidate in recent times. . . Dean failed to accept the fact that before you can get elected by the people you have to be selected by the crowd in charge. You don't just run for president in the Democratic Party (unless you're a Sharption or Kucincich doomed from the start); you ask permission nicely just like Clinton did. Show the elite that you want to come to Washington to serve them, not lead others. . . . It's bad enough when a Georgia peanut farmer like Carter tries it, but Dean came out of the establishment himself so his crime was worse: betrayal rather than naivete. And he paid the price.

It's not political. Washington is a place where more things are done illegally or under the table than just about anywhere in the world. Where your laws are made - and broken - as Mark Russell used to say. And it's the world's most powerful private club. If you want to get ahead here the first thing you've got to do is shut your mouth. And show you respect the people who really run the place. Dean didn't do that.

full: http://prorev.com/