As I sit around waiting for CNN to post the final delegate counts in Missouri and New Mexico (100% and 80% of the votes in as of 1:45am, but the delegate assignments still aren't complete), let me say a bit about Howard Dean.
I think it's tremendously important to the Democratic party that at some point Howard Dean bow out of the race, and that he not take his fight all the way to the convention.
If Dean were to stick it out to the bitter end, perhaps on the theory that a couple of big wins and some delegate pick-ups in other states keeps Kerry (or whoever) from running away with the nomination and keeps Dean in the game enough to be a power at a brokered convention, then my feeling is that an awful lot of Dean's supporters would stick with him. I think the cultishness of Dean's following has been somewhat overstated (I've flirted with that meme myself), but there's no doubting that many of his people are folks who have been woken up by the Dean message into a kind of political interest and activism they've never experienced before, and, as such, they have a tendency to be true believers in the cause.
True believers, we know, have a tendency not to give up, they hold on to the bitter end because their commitment is not so much a matter of rational policy analysis or personal preference based on character, personality or looks as it is an emotional and, well, kind of spiritual quest -- and one doesn't give up The Quest in mid-journey, one follows it through to the last moment possible.
I'm not saying that all of Dean's supporters are like this, or that even a majority of them are, but it's got to be conceded that a sizable portion of them relate to Dean's candidacy in this way. And that's why getting Dean to drop out at some point in the process is imperative for the party, because if those people get dragged along into a fight at the very end, and Dean loses (which he most probably will, given the odds which will be stacked against him), they will be shocked, strikcen, demoralized and completely uninterested in politics any more, and especially not in supporting the Democratic nominee. The blow to them will be so severe, that they will just drop out of the entire thing, which is pretty much where most of them started in the first place.
And if that happens in any kind of mass number, the net result is that people who could possibly have been convinced to vote for the Democratic nominee, if they had enough time to get over the pain and emotional distress of Dean's defeat, will not vote at all. (Fortunately, they won't vote for anyone else, either, unless perhaps Nader is running and they feel the need to strike back at someone by voting for him.) It need hardly be said that in the drive to remove Bush from office, given the predilection of the opposition for dirty tricks and stealing elections in whatever way is necessary, every single vote is going to be needed, and there's no way that giving up any block of voters is going to help us. We need those Dean votes, badly, to insure that we win bot just the popular vote, but the Presidency as well.
So it's very important, I think, at some time -- not necessarily now or after Saturday, but once it becomes clear that Dean seems to intend to stay in the race without a chance of winning it -- for Terry McAuliffe or some heavyweights in the party to take Dean aside and convince him, by whatever means necessary, that he must withdraw in sufficient time to allow his more ardent followers the opportunity of being courted by another candidate.
On Gadflyer, Thomas Schaller makes a similar point, concentrating on what Kerry, specifically, must do to insure the Dean's movement be folded into the party's general election campaign.
Now what the hell's the story with those delegate counts?
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:
Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.
Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
