Why I support Howard Dean, and why you should, too
Part II: The angry factor

Yesterday I tried to explain why I, and bloggers in general, have already adopted a candidate. Today, I will expand on the idea that we're angry and why Howard Dean nicely addresses it.

How can you not be angry? How can you see the news and not be angry? How can you hear George (the W stands for "Whopper!") Bush lie about his tax "cut" and not be angry? How can you listen to confirmation after confirmation that we were lied to about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and not be angry? How can you see time after time that the Whopper allocates far less than he promises to pay for programs solely designed to make him seem less like the mean-spirited fool he is, from fighting AIDS in Africa to No Child Left Untested, and not be angry?

I have a hard time believing that all those people who voted for the Whopper in order to vote against the outrages of the Clinton administration can remain so complacent about the outrages of the present administration. Even on the right-wing blogs that I mentioned yesterday, there is no outrage at the massive fraud and deception that has been perpetrated by this government. Maybe the American people just expect a certain level of fraud from MBA's or Republicans in general. If that's true, then it may be worse than I thought.

Because the Whopper's lies and indiscretions are far, far more insidious than any hanky-panky or questionable financial deals from Clinton. (Although it has been well documented how there was never any substance to accusations against the Clintons in Whitewater.) When Bill Clinton lied about Monica Lewinsky, he really discredited himself, which is too bad. But when the Whopper lied about Iraq, Americans (and Britons and Iraqis) died.

Repeat after me: Bush Lied, People Died. (Props to Pat K. and probably others, at the Daily Kos's comment boards for the slogan.)

In short, after all of this and so much more, how can you not stand up and say, as Howard Dean famously does, "I want my country back!"

It was Dean's speech to the DNC in February that first attracted me to him. His use of Wellstone's "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" line intrigued me--being from Wisconsin, I have a great affinity for Wellstone, and Wellstone East, also known as Russ Feingold. I was also drawn in by Dean's opposition to the Iraq war, and not because Dean is an utter pacifist, but because the man articulated a reasonable and reasoned foreign policy, whereby diplomacy, international cooperation, and the consideration of actual--as opposed to imagined--threats to America and Americans are the guiding principles, not some desire for empire that seeps from neocons in the administration.

Dean's tag line then--and it still is one of his best--was "We can do better." And you know what? We can. A potted plant would be better than the Whopper. I mean, potted plants can?t send American citizens to die under false pretenses. Remember, Bush Lied, People Died.

So right now, Dean is the angry candidate. I don't think anyone will deny that. I mean, I don't see anyone who is as angry as I am jumping up and down over Joe Lieberman and Carol Mosely-Braun. (I'm not slamming them, by the way--their respective records of public service speak for themselves, but they lack the demeanor that gets people all het up.) Right now, Dean is making it happen, though; we are jumping up and down. Al Sharpton can pull it off, as can Kicinich and maybe Edwards. But Dean has, by and large, locked up the angry vote right now.

Don't underestimate the angry vote, either. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the people who voted for the Whopper really voted against Clinton--as personified by Gore in 2000--because they were angry.

And, more importantly, the angry vote is making people politically active. In 2000, people who voted for Nader did so because they were angry in equal measure with the Republicans and the Democrats. But the Nader voters were also in large part activists. I was not active in the 2000 election, partly because, though I think Gore would have been a good president, especially if he'd been allowed to just be Al Gore, he never did a thing to motivate me. I mean, I was motivated to beat the Whopper, but I need to be for something, not just against something.

Time and time again I meet people who are just discovering Dean, and they all say very similar things: "I've never been active in politics before," is usually how it goes. Well, neither have I, but after what happened in 2000, I could no longer sit idly by. My anger made me do something, and since I didn't have the wherewithal to stage a coup (you know, I didn't have the Supreme Court behind me), I decided instead to become an activist.

Will Dean be able to go to November 2004 with just the angry vote? I doubt it. But it's helping him win the early primary--the one for activists and donors that I wrote about yesterday. Tomorrow, I will talk about Dean's policy positions, and why, even though I was first attracted to Dean because of the angry, I have become so much more convinced that he is the real thing.

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