In Salon on Howard Dean, but I can’t say I’m surprised. That’s how it works, once you’re in advocacy politics. It’s really the only thing you can do, because no one else wants to hire a political figure.
And all of this goes back to a culture where voters always choose to financially support candidates over activists and organizers. I guarantee you that you’d have a whole different ball game if progressives donated in significant enough numbers to progressive bloggers and activists, thus funding the real left wing of the party. But they don’t.
While I admire Howard and think he’s got a certain amount of hard-core integrity, he’s not a leftist and he’s never been.
Anyway, here’s Howard’s rebuttal.
Dean was left of Obama, however, and he FOUGHT for single-payer — so on balance he probably would have been a better president, even if not an ideal one from a liberal-progressive point of view.
Being left of Obama isn’t saying all the much though, and I never thought of Dean as being much different from NAFTA-loving centrist Bill Clinton.
I know that it would be beneath their dignity to take a step down from high society, but it might have been possible for people like him to go back home and get a regular job on the level with the rest of us. Maybe even Dr. Dean could go back into the practice of medicine. The people of Vermont are really hurting right now and maybe he could work for the Red Cross or somebody. That would be a good reconnection with reality.
Harry Truman had to buy a car and drive himself and Bess back to Missouri when his term was up.
And Truman had to take out a loan to buy the car and pay for the trip home.
The story is weak and should never have been published. I know Dean is no lefty, but Justin Elliott wrote a story he can’t back up. He took pieces of information, strung them together and called it a story. For example, Elliott is such an idiot that he doesn’t realize that there is no conflict between supporting longer patent life and stopping the game playing around patent extension. Elliott thinks he has a point because he couldn’t find a quote earlier than 2009, as if the only valid opinion Dean could have had to be on the record pre-2009. The story is built on pure speculation and projection about Dean’s motives and the “appearance” of conflict of interest.
Elliott has a stronger story about Joe Trippi going to work for Bahrain; he should have stuck with that.