Why I Support Howard Dean
A few words on this "Blog for Dean Day"
Milwaukeeans, please add your statements of support to the comments!

For a more complete list of reasons why I support Howard Dean, check my archives; I actually did a four-part series on the matter. For now, the highlights:

Howard Dean is angry. And darn it, so am I. The election was stolen, our civil rights have been trampled, our economy's in the crapper, and too many Democrats have been complicit in the ruination of our country. We can do better.

Howard Dean is smart. He went to med school, which has given him a certain approach to problems. He likes to actually consider evidence before he makes a decision, and make that decision based on the evidence he sees. He does not (unlike some people I could name) decide what he wants and then fabricate the evidence to support it.

Howard Dean believes in health care for all Americans. And he's got the plan to do it, plus a record in Vermont any of the other candidates would die for.

Howard Dean believes in healthy children. The Success by Six and Dr. Dynasaur programs have made Vermont's mothers and children just about the healthiest in the nation. We have a startlingly poor survival rate for infants in the most-industrialized of all industrial nations, and a Howard Dean presidency could turn that around.

Howard Dean supports the civil rights of all Americans. Even the canadians recognize gay unions now! Do we really want to keep falling further behind the Canadians???

Howard Dean balances budgets. A lot of people go back to Dean's (Wellstone's, really) line that he represents "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" as their favorite line. My favorite is actually "The reason that is important is because it is hard to fund social justice without a balanced budget, which is why this President doesn't have one."

Howard Dean is electable. And don't let anybody tell you he isn't: He's never lost an election before; he has a crack team in Burlington; and he's got more than 100,000 people getting his emails all over the country. If you just count the core members of Meetups, then there is already a sizable Dean campaign team on the ground in every major city in the U.S. That's a kind of organization no one else can claim.

Howard Dean believes in a sane foreign policy. A Dean administrations foreign policy will not be based on oil, or on resolving his father's issues, or on some quixotic "Project for a New American Century" empire-building scheme. Rather, Dean will evaluate threats to the U.S. before attacking wildly, and cultivate allies rather than ignore them.

Howard Dean is dead-on about most other Democratic causes, too. He steadfastly supports a woman's right to choose; he is very pro-labor despite being from a labor-poor state; he's for environmental protection; he hates the idea of privatizing social security. I could go on, but I want to leave something for the rest of you to talk about.

Milwaukeeans, leave your statements of support in my comments section. If you're not from around here, I guess you could, too. Also, though, check in with Anna over at the Dean2004 blog, and leave comments there, too.

And let's hope that, on, let's say, January 21, 2005, we can have a "Blog for Dean's Inauguration Day." And if you haven't registered yet with MoveOn, you have until midnight to do it!