[lbo-talk] Dean's Self-Demolition

[Liza Featherstone]

Totally agree with this. This is one of the reasons why Dean's defeat in
Iowa was depressing (despite the fact that in policy terms, the Democrats
are pretty similar to each other). Also depressing is the new post-Iowa
conventional wisdom that grass-roots organization, and a capacity to
mobilize and politicize people don't actually matter in an election. You can
see why elites would want to punish Dean for doing that, and make clear to
others that it doesn't work.  I'm also disturbed that the idealism and
enthusiasm of the Dean volunteers - again, whatever one thinks of Dean - is
consistently viewed by the media as self-indulgent, silly and totally
irrelevant to the political process. Whenever they write about a Dean phone
bank, it sounds like they're describing the Rainbow Gathering.

Liza


> From: "Michael Dawson -PSU" <mdawson at pdx.edu>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:38:01 -0800
> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Dean's Self-Demolition
> 
>> He has a lot of other problems as a candidate -- chiefly his abrasive,
>> "too hot for TV" personality, which I don't think he can do much to
>> alter at this point. I guess Vermont voters didn't mind his style, but
>> I don't think it will play on the national stage.
> 
> I'm shocked by this interpretation.  I believe this whole trope is 100
> percent a confirmation of Herman and Chomsky's media theory, 100 percent a
> product of commercial media censorship of anything out of bounds.  In my
> experience, most people are literally aching to find a politician with real
> ideas, authentic, real-time reactions, and an actual honest, open approach
> to politics.  Dean might be this, in some major ways, but the major media
> are bashing him for it, for the very reason Louis Proyect (!!!) discusses
> today on Pen-L -- such authenticity and spontaneity suggest a lack of
> submission to elite handlers.
> 
> If the media were spinning Dean's demeanor as something that apathetic
> Americans have been waiting for, Dean would have won 80 percent in Iowa.
> Instead, he's "unelectable" and "unpresidential."
> 
> Nauseating in the extreme.  And, btw, ain't no way, no how I'm ever voting
> for that fake-ass boob John Kerry!
> 
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