Burnt Orange Report

Dean-speak

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

As many of you know, I cared a lot about the Democratic Primary. Maybe too much. But that's my nature. Once I find an issue, I tend to stick with it until there is nothing more that I can do, or another thing comes along.

So the other day I read an interview with Howard Dean about his thoughts about the past year. (Is it so wrong to cry?)

It just reminded me how much I really respected the guy. Yeah, he went a little nuts. And I'm sure if he was the nominee right now he'd still be getting hammered. But reading that interview and the comments people left reminded me of the good times and why it was all worth it.

And I hope that someday, we will be ready for that again. So for all you Dean fans out there, do yourself a favor and read it all the way through. And a comment from Fran Vincent, Austin organizer and candidate for SDEC from SD14... There's a reason this man has all of our hearts. It's because he speaks from his.

(The best clips are in the extended entry...)

One of Howard Dean's most poignant memories of his presidential campaign is of a woman in a wheelchair who gave him $50 in quarters at a breakfast meeting in Iowa last summer. The money came from her federal supplemental income check.

"Even now I can hardly tell that story," says Dean, his voice choking in a rare display of emotion. "She said she had been saving the quarters for two years, when she could, for something that was really important - and this was really important to her."

Dean is in awe of his rise. He is accepting of his fall. He readily concedes he made mistakes. He has difficulty, though, coming to grips with the sacrifices and trust of his legions of devoted supporters.

"I am pretty overwhelmed," he says and pauses as his eyes brim with tears.

...

As this year opened, the nomination was his to lose, and lose it he did.

Asked why, Dean quickly and almost dispassionately ticks off three reasons:

"I think Kerry pulled himself together to do a good job in Iowa and he should be given credit for it," he said. "Secondly, we peaked too early, and gave everybody an opportunity to go after us. We knew that whoever won Iowa was going to win the whole thing and we just peaked too early, and there was not much we could do about it.

"Third of all, because I started out from so far behind, we never really had the money, and then we didn't have the time, to build the kind of infrastructure you need to sustain you through a campaign the whole way."

...

Much has been written in the past few months speculating on who and what is to blame for his dramatic fall. Dean dismisses it all. "I take full responsibility for not winning the campaign," he said. (*tear)

"The reason I don't like all the kiss and tell stuff is there is no need to fight about whose fault this was. I will take all the blame. I oversaw those decisions and I accepted them and I approved them."

...

He thinks often, though, of the people who worked for him, who supported him, who contributed to his campaign and who saw in him a reason to get involved in politics.

"I was astonished by the response of the public - by their enormous enthusiasm. You have no idea what people did for us. I certainly didn't. People would work 16 hours a day on top of their job, 60 hours a week on top of their jobs. People quit their jobs. Look at the kids. They just drove to Burlington. It was just shocking to me. I never thought anything like that was going to happen," he said.

...

Gone are the chartered planes and the entourage. No press plane. No aides. Just Howard Dean.

"I think if I had dropped out of the race on February 18 and said that was that, that would have been a terrible thing to do," he said, his voice breaking once again.

"Because it would have just been about me - and it never was."

Posted by Karl-Thomas Musselman at June 13, 2004 01:21 PM | TrackBack