But damn, people suck

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But as I think about it tonight, I think what both these guys have in common is a disdain for the Bush dynasty and the elitist wing of the R's. Both Scarborough and Buchanan are of the populist man-of-the-people branch of conservatism (see the stuff on Kevin Phillips at Salon for more about it). This is a group that's been co-opted rather than embraced by Bush II, and they're the ones that booted out I.

My point (and I do have one) is that this populist wing is where Bush is weakest in November. They aren't fundamentalists and they aren't basking in wealth. They're sinking with our economy, and even if Buchanan and Scarborough don't want to admit it consciously, Dean is best positioned (with Edwards second) to shear them off the R bandwagon. It's the level that a successful Dean campaign will operate on. (If he loses the nomination or the general, it's because he failed to do it) Sort of a gut level, "I'm one of you guys" thing. With Bush, it's phony, but Dean's the real deal. I'm avoiding hyperbole here, but it's something to keep in mind as Kerry probably wins narrowly tonight. And I think it's a helluva good answer to the "Kerry=electable" meme.

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Their Dean editorial today, claiming he's out of the "mainstream" is simply infuriating. What "mainstream" is he out of by arguing the U.S. is no safer with Saddam captured? The nearly 80 percent of Americans who just told CBS they agree with him?

The nearest I can tell, the Post is chastising Dean for not agreeing with the 9 other Dem candidates (they snidely throw in Hillary as a "shadow candidate"). Yet Dean's disagreement with Holy Joe, John "War-hero-with-good-hair" Kerry, dreamy John Edwards and Wesley "Cbal ran out of funny nicknames" Clark, is the reason most of us support him.

Dean was out of the Democratic mainstream when the Senate was accepting Bush's assumptions and picking at the edges of the war party's plans. Dean was out of the mainstread when he called it an illegitimate war. He was a looney fringer when said it was the wrong war at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.

Now, when the country is beginning to catch up with him, when the Dems spent the summer chasing him on foreign policy, when every Beltway journo spent Sunday and Monday telling us Dean was toast 'cause we caught Saddam and are already being proved wrong, now when run on sentences keep coming out of my keyboard, we're supposed to nod our heads and say "yes, the WaPo has been wrong about all this, and Dean has been right, but now's the time to ditch the guy who know what he's doing?"

I get the feeling this is what conservatives felt like in 1976. (Except of course we're right and they're evil. Just a given.) The Conventional Wisdom just presumes us wrong, even when our arguments are better. Lazy thinkers in Washington just accept the CW. And the party would rather be wrong than win.

Things did seem to turn out okay in the end, but this just sucks. Too many stupid people.

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