Am I mistaken, or is Vermont a right-to-work state?

Vermont is not a right to work state. They are in the south, midwest and far west.

To lead balloons point, Dean got his ground game from his internet strategy. I'm on the ground for him next week, got the marching orders by email. Got the enthusiasm from the people in the campaign.

Go, Melanie!

P.S.: Melanie, you are right about the foundation of it all being the internet. However, Dean has handled and harnessed the internet energy well. It was not a foregone conclusion that the Meet-Ups would work. The Dean campaign deserves credit for getting solid, productive work out of those Meet-Ups, such as the handwritten letter writing campaign to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as using them as jumping-off points for other volunteer activities.

One little-commented on aspect: Dean has shown tremendous self-confidence and courage in letting the Meet-Up volunteers essentially set up and run many activities without control or interference from Burlington. Not many candidates would allow such an unharnessed force to emerge.

Are any of you just a little bit nervous about what may happen with HoDean in the next year - a year is a VERY long time on the national stage.

And he has most certainly not been on the national stage, merely the fevered hothouse of way left political activists. Are you guys certain that Dean will play well of the national stage for a full year?

He has a very, uh, distinctive personality that admittedly massages the G-spot of the very committed way left, activist base of the democrat party. But he can appear angry, which is death in national elections. (Perhaps he has learned to stay off motorcycles and not offer stupid plans to team up with Saudi commandos to find Osama - stick a fork in Kerry and Clark).

Anything can happen of course, but tell the truth, you still think Al Gore is great, right? And that Al Gore was clearly a fantastic candidate in 2000. And that you can't understand who all those people who liked Bush in the debates. Right? Admit it. Okay, now ponder that those same people (called voters) may find HoDean a little tough to take. Maybe not, of course, because each election is different, but maybe.

Be careful what you wish for. Remember that pesky Electoral College. Dean has to go a bunch of states that may not like him very well. The map is inexorable.

HoDean on the national stage is very, very, very, very high risk and there is no net for downticket democrats...like Southern house and senate candidates. HoDean creates the possibility of complete democrat meltdown. (Note that I said "possibility")

W creates the possibility of a complete republican meltdown. (Note that I said "possibility")

Jack,

Actually, I think many readers would agree that Gore ran an especially bad campaign in 2000. It's amazing to me that he actually did as well as he did with the lousy campaign and not being able to make the argument that he stood for the Clinton policies that many voters liked, but could keep it in his pants.

You are right that Dean could lose, but the only other candidate who isn't hamstrung by votes in Congress approving Iraq and other policies that they now disagree with is Clark. And Clark has built a team of ex-Gore folks, and I am not anxious to give them another chance.

It's too early to know how Dean's act will wear. But he is working hard and hopefully learning when only political junkies are paying attention.

I think a great deal will ride on how the media treats Pres. Bush. Will they put him on the defensive and actually force him to respond to whatever the Democratic candidate is saying? Or will they let him keep dictating exactly what venues he will appear in and what questions they get to ask?

My feeling is that there is a better chance that voters will respond to a candidate who has a clear idea of where he wants the country to go. If they vote for Bush, what can you do?

"W creates the possibility of a complete republican meltdown. (Note that I said "possibility")"

I think that is a much smaller possibility than the Dean meltdown. The South and Southwest will never support dems, and redistricting will protect most congressional repubs.
And there are no surprises about Bush. He is what he is and EVERYONE knows what he is.

"voters will respond to a candidate who has a clear idea of where he wants the country to go"

W has laid out his agenda. Low taxes, freedom abroad. Dean has done nothing but criticize. Right now, he is the anti-agenda. It is all slash and burn, but what is he FOR? How will he protect America? I know he has no plan, and that he does not need one to win the primary, but does he even have a lie of a plan for national consumption? Maybe he can steal Clark's Saudi commando plan.

Hey, what do you all think of Ted Rall's column? What percentage of Dean supporters agree with Rall? Does that matter?

Any bets on Louisiana governor this Saturday?

"freedom abroad"??? I love it, Jackie. I needed a good laugh.

Mike: "Actually, I think many readers would agree that Gore ran an especially bad campaign in 2000."

As I recall, Gore ran on a very left-wing "People vs the Powerful" populist campaign. He felt upstaged by and excluded Clinton from his campaign. And then he ran into truth-telling issues and Buddist temple stuff. But he sealed his fate during the debates when Americans saw the real Al Gore, or Gores.

So, yes he ran a bad campaign, and yes, he was a horrid campaigner. But the left-wing message has been tried, and it failed in a national election. Did I say that he lost ALL states in the South?

And LB, I know you and the ANSWER boys admire genocidal dictators, but tossing Saddam, with his 300,000 dead. and the Taliban is a pretty good record. Of course, the UN had their thumb up their ass when 800,000 Rwandans died. Nice.

Again, can we see more of Ted Rall? I think mainstream democrats may be shocked at what the anti-war movement is doing in their name. I KNOW independents will be shocked. Is Rall going to be a Dean advisor?

What Dean is doing is empowerment. I hate to say that because it sounds like worn-out doubletalk, but it's true.

You're right, Melanie. My brain somehow got Vermont confused with Iowa, which surprised me by being RTW.

"What Dean is doing is empowerment." You're right, that's doubletalk. Do you mean that Dean gives local power to the meet-up organizers? Do you mean that Dean's views reflect give and take among supporters who get a say in his positions? Do you think that he would change his positions on his own, or would he "talk" to his supporters before making any change in positions"?

Or do you mean that he is empowering in the same sense that Pat Buchanan is "empowering" to his loony band of nativist, anti-semitic fuckwits? IE: Dean gives voice to anti-war zealots who are way outside the mainstream of the two major parties.

Other than he hates Bush and was against the war from the beginning and he wants to raise everyone's taxes, what does he believe? How much influence does Ted Rall have?

You can think that Bush fucked up and not be for dictators! Bush didn't go into Iraq to rescue it from tyranny. That's a rational that they say now, after the fact, because their original excuses turned out to be wrong. In fact, both Republicans and Democrats have a long history of being happy to let all kinds of tyrants fuck up countries, and sometimes even help them oppress their people if it suited our interests. Bush is no exception, as you can see in his careful treatment of Putin and ignoring the anti-Democratic election in Azerbaijan.

Bush is floundering around in his foreign policy. He keeps flip-flopping on our Iraq policy and now we seem to be getting ready to hand over power to our hand picked council who are clearly not ready for it. The fact is that we have gone in and taken over a country and now Bush should come clean and tell us that it's going to take a while and it's going to be costly, because we have an obligation to stay until some kind of stable government emerges. But Bush doesn't have the balls to say that, and now Rove wants to make sure that our troops are coming home right before the upcoming election.

When all is said and done, I predict that there will be two countries that are going to be hotbeds of terrorism in the next decade: Iraq and Afghanistan.

NYTimes editorial from Feb 2003:

"President Bush sketched an expansive vision last night [at his American Enterprise Institute speech] of what he expects to accomplish by a war in Iraq. Instead of focusing on eliminating weapons of mass destruction, or reducing the threat of terror to the United States, Mr. Bush talked about establishing a 'free and peaceful Iraq' that would serve as a 'dramatic and inspiring example' to the entire Arab and Muslim world, provide a stabilizing influence in the Middle East and even help end the Arab-Israeli conflict. The idea of turning Iraq into a model democracy in the Arab world is one some members of the administration have been discussing for a long time."

Mike, you have been pretty reasonble, but this is nuts: "The fact is that we have gone in and taken over a country and now Bush should come clean and tell us that it's going to take a while and it's going to be costly, because we have an obligation to stay until some kind of stable government emerges. But Bush doesn't have the balls to say that, and now Rove wants to make sure that our troops are coming home right before the upcoming election."

Bush has used every single speech and comment to reiterate how hard the fight against terror will be. He has NEVER said or hinted that it would be easy. Never, ever. He has always said it would be long and hard. Every speech, every time.

"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"

You are deliberately mis-remebering what happened on the Lincoln. Bush said the combat part of the Iraq battle in the war on terror was complete, but the war on terror has a long way to go and it will be very, very hard. Of course, you guys can continue to mis-state what Bush has said all along. And it may make you feel good to do so. And you, the French and Ted Rall may take pleasure in your fantasy world, but you should be very careful before you use your mis-statements to a national audience.

Remember 9/11? That was when foreign terrorists hijacked 4 jets and crashed them into the WTC and Pentagon. Over 3000 Americans were killed. It was on the news. HoDean and the anti-war, hard-left are running as if it never happened. Must be nice in the democrat primary cave.

I see the race in Louisiana is tightening, are you still to scared to make a prediction? I noticed that the black mayor of New Orleans has backed the republican.

Actually, LB, I get the idea you have no real interest in elective politics and actual elections. Rather, you seem to be a ideological purist who wins gobs of arguments in the faculty lounge. The purpose of all these discussions is ELECTIONS. That is the process by which power is distributed in this country. And all the rest is bullshit. And in the election business, democrats haven't done very well since 1994, when Clinton lost the House and the Senate.

Apparently, for the first time, you waaaay lefties will lower some of your impossibly high, ultra-left standards and will support ANY democrat against Bush. Do you believe that this will guarantee victory? Don't you see that that your historic distance from voters has blinded you. In other words, if you guys LIKE Dean, the rest of the country will hate him. And if Dean runs the angry campaign you demand, the rest of the country will run away.

Oh, boo-hoo, you're hurting my feelings here, Jack.

Your guy should be cruising to a crushing victory, would be if he were any good at being president, and instead he is taking head shots from a former governor of Vermont, who in large part single-handedly has taken the varnish off of your guy and stripped him from 70 to 50. If you've never skydived, Jack, now you know what it feels like.

As to Louisiana, even if you think it makes me a bad person, I don't care to comment, because I am not informed on that contest.

Clearly, the Bush Administration sold the conflict as easy and short from the start. For example, see

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/5472430.htm

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-secdef0162.html