Outrage
After presidential candidates are defeated or drop out of races there is usually a small deluge of what are called "post mortem" pieces, examining how and why a certain candidacy failed. One such piece,
"The Assassination of Howard Dean", written by
Shobak.org editor Naeem Mohaiemen appeared yesterday on the left-leaning website
AlterNet. It is by far one the worst, most poorly researched and insipid pieces of political writing that I have ever read. Not only is the premise wrong, but the facts that are used to illustrate the author's points are also wrong. If this is an example (and I pray that it isn't) of liberal commentary in this country, then people on the left need to be seriously worried.
The overall thrust of the article is that moderates, and more specifically the DLC, torpedoed Dean's campaign because they didn't agree with his policy positions and, as Mohaiemen implies, feared his radical, liberal message. Before I delve into that, however, I'd like to quote from the article.
By the sixth paragraph, after complaining about the Republican tactics that defeated Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis (and also failing to present one logical reason why either candidate should have won his race, save for a mention that "Carter's gentle ways secured the historic Camp David Egypt-Israel accord") Mohaiemen brings up the DLC. The resentment is palpable as the author explains how the DLC moved the party toward the center, a move that resulted in a Democratic president winning two elections in a row, something that hadn't happened since FDR. The piece then turns to the 2000 race.:
Nothing succeeds like success. Buoyed by Clinton's popularity, a balanced budget and an era of prosperity, the DLC became the standard-bearer for the Democrats' political identity. That is until 2000, when the DLC's next king-apparent, Al Gore, took a stumble in the Florida panhandle and was then hog-tied by the Supreme Court. When the dust had settled and King George was safely inside the palace, a recount revealed that Gore had actually won, but the damage was done. The DLC's critics now came out of hiding - attacking the party for being too centrist, too cautious and too much like "Republican-lite." If you try to ape the right-wing of the nation, voters may decide to go for the "real thing"!
Forgetting for the moment the petty use of royal imagery, Mohaiemen is dead wrong. While it's true that Al Gore was once a poster boy of the "New Democrats," he did not lose the 2000 election because he was a moderate. He lost the election because he was a moderate who tried to run as a populist. Gore ran away from himself in 2000, and in the process failed to win even one southern state, including his home state of Tennessee and his boss' home state of Arkansas. Rather than running on the still-booming economy and his own personal efforts to scale back the size and scope of the federal government, Gore's campaign was consumed with fighting anything big: Tobacco, Drug Companies, Oil, HMOs, etc. You name it, Gore was ready to take it on. He was fighting for "the people, not the powerful." He didn't lose because of his moderate beliefs, but rather in spite of them.
Am I making too big a deal of this one paragraph? Maybe. But there must be some degree of accountability on this matter. You can't say that Al Gore was a moderate and that's why he lost the election because it fits nicely into your piece. You cannot wish things true by merely writing them down.
Moving on to the overall point of the piece -- that Dean was brought down by the sinister forces of moderate members in the Democratic party. While there were undoubtedly moderate members of the party who didn't like Howard Dean's rhetoric, there was also no denying that Dean had a relatively conservative gubnatorial record while Governor of Vermont. Even before Dean was a presidential candidate he was on record as advocating raising the retirment age, a position he took back at the behest of members of the Democratic party. As Governor Dean received glowing marks from the NRA. And as a candidate he argued that gun control laws should be different in rural areas than they are in urban areas, a position that many liberals deemed obliquely racist. Dean even went so far outside of accepted liberal orthodoxy as to say that he wanted the votes of white guys with Confederate flags painted on their pick-ups. Dean may have been caustic in his remarks about the war in Iraq and his anger at President Bush, and his supporters were certainly more liberal than the rest of the Democratic Party, but it's hard to say Dean was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal.
Although Mohaiemen claims (typically without offering any evidence) that the "DLC reacted with fury to the Dean candidacy...[and] attacks were carried out by DLC operatives," Dean's most vocal critic prior to the Iowa caucus was Missori Rep. Dick Gephardt, hardly a DLC-er, who attacked Dean in Iowa over tax breaks to insurance companies, Medicare, and Dean's derogatory comments about the Iowa caucus.
I know that Mohaiemen's piece is small article published on a fringe website, but I can't help the anger that reading it stirs in me. To me, as a (for the time-being) moderate Democrat, this is important because websites like AlterNet is a major news source for a number of liberal and left-leaning people. Articles like this one paint a picture for the reader that is already in the reader's mind. However, the real danger comes when articles like this are so devoid of facts, and predicated on false notions that the author might really wish were true. When this happens the state of public discourse takes another hit, not to mention the ability of those who would criticize the President (and there is ample room to do so, both on the right and left), to present a clear and accurate argument.
Do I think that Naeem Mohaiemen purposefully misled readers? No. I think that Mohaiemen honestly believes everything in the article. It's not as if these facts weren't avaiable to the author. I mean, I researched this article on the internet while writing it. The problem is that facts do not find refuge in the pen of a true-believer. After all, when yours is the side of good and righteous, facts often become just something to write around. If this is liberalism, you can officially count me out.
Tony
Posted by thynkhard
at 4:34 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, 19 February 2004 4:44 PM EST
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