Recently in Howard Dean Category
"Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
Do you remember the Iraq War of 2003? Remember those heady days of euphoria when it ended two months later, with only 139 American lives lost? Journey back with me -- TIME-LIFE style, if you will -- to the scene of our triumph: "Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a 'hero' and boomed, 'He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.' PBS' Gwen Ifill said Bush was 'part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.' On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, 'The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a -- on a carrier landing. This must be very meaningful to the United States military.'"
Well, today marks the five-year anniversary of our glorious victory, the day that "splendid little war" came to a close. Among those honoring the day, and the remarkable achievement of our Commander-in-Chief:
"'I think it would be nice to have this all done by July 1,' Dean said on ABC's "Good Morning America" program. 'If we can do it sooner than that, that's all the better.'" Howard Dean sets a date of July 1 at the latest for the primary election to end, meaning there'll thankfully be no convention floor fight. I'm still thinking May 6 would be more preferable.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton drops the electoral vote standard (for now) and picks an even more unwieldy statistic by which to judge the candidates: ""Right now, among all the primary states, believe it or not, Hillary's only 16 votes behind in pledged delegates,' said the former president, 'and she's gonna wind up with the lead in the popular vote in the primary states. She's gonna wind up with the lead in the delegates [from primary states].'" (The 18 caucus states, you may remember, don't matter.) Clinton also went on to do more stumping for John McCain, calling him a "moderate" who "has given about all you can give for this country without dyin' for it."
"He raises tens of millions of dollars over a few months. His supporters are passionate, almost fanatical. And his grass-roots movement threatens a more established rival. A description of Howard Dean in 2003 or Sen. Barack Obama today?" In today's cover story, the Washington Post toys with many of our worst nightmares by comparing the current state of the Obama campaign to that of also-rans Dean and Bradley. "Like Dean and Bradley, Obama is strongest among elites, whom other Democrats derisively call 'latte liberals' -- a group that voices strong opinions but is not big enough to win him the nomination. Polls show that Obama is ahead of Clinton among voters with college degrees, while Clinton has a huge lead among voters who make less than $35,000 and those who have graduated only from high school...But one major difference is that Obama has strong numbers among African Americans, about 40 percent of whom are backing him, putting him in a tie with Clinton." Hmm. Hillary Clinton, heroine of the working-class? I'm not buying it. (More like name recognition, I'd wager.) Well, call me an inveterate latte-progressive elitist of the first order, but I just hope Obama finds a way to get his message out to the more, uh, likely-to-be-uninformed among us. However dignified their daily struggles, that crowd has burdened us with virtually unelectable candidates for two elections straight. (And it's not like Gore or Kerry had any common-man cachet either.)
