DEAN IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Why An Anti Dean Blog (Diary of a Deanophobe, TNR.com, 1/07/04)

Given that I think Dean is almost certain to lose if nominated, I think it's important to set the predicate in advance of the conditions of his loss. Bush does not have a popular majority for his domestic policies. If he defeats Dean, it will be largely because Dean's foreign policy positions, personality, and political clumsiness rendered him unpalatable to voters who would otherwise be open to an alternative to Bush. Nonetheless, if Bush defeats Dean, he and his supporters will claim it was because the voters were dying to slash taxes on the wealthy and privatize Social Security, and Democrats may well be cowed into going along. Those who argue now that Dean is a strong general candidate will be ill-positioned to claim, after Dean loses in a landslide, that Bush has no mandate because he ran against a patsy.

Someone who's incumbent President could only get a plurality of the vote against Bob Dole and then argued against impeachment on the grounds that tossing him out of office would be going against the will of the voters has no standing to make this argument. If, on the other hand, the voters endorse Republican control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress for the third election in a row, that will be a mandate.

Posted by David Cohen at January 7, 2004 10:45 PM