Excerpt:
June 8, 2005
Dean is Clearly Still Not Ready for Primetime
By Susan Estrich
In the long run, the critical question for Democrats may turn out to be not what Party Chairman Howard Dean is doing, but what he isn't doing.
The answer to the first question is easy. What he's doing is what he has become know for: shooting from the lip. This is, after all, the man who went from front-runner to also-ran in a matter of weeks, on the strength of a series of mistakes that convinced the most liberal Democratic voters in America that the guy was not ready for primetime. The much-remembered "Dean scream" came after he lost, not before -- he was already dead, politically speaking, by then.
So it should come as no surprise to experienced Dean watchers to hear him say that most Republicans have never earned an honest living. This is what it means not to be ready for primetime. You make the sort of statements that are sure to get attention because they hit flashpoints like class warfare. It's a Republican talk show host's dream.
The reason other Democrats don't say such things is because you don't win elections this way. In point of fact, of course, what Dean is saying is wrong. Most Republicans are not coupon-clippers -- they go to work and earn a day's pay like the rest of us. And hearing Howard Dean say otherwise not only offends Republicans, but also moderates and independents who have no taste for class warfare or the strident liberalism that Howard Dean is selling.
But that's not really the problem with Dean. In seeking the party chairmanship, he promised not to run for president. I'd be willing to bet that Howard Dean will be well out of the picture by the time November 2008 rolls around, having been replaced by someone with less of an appetite for insulting would-be voters and donors.
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