I said as much as soon as I began volunteering with the Howard Dean for President campaign. "I hope that liberals aren't disappointed when they find out that Dean is fiscally conservative and generally a states-rights guy, as Republicans once purported to be, and still do, at least when it's convenient for them." Katha Pollitt knows what I'm talking about.
Dean opposes the war on Iraq, wants to rescind the Bush tax cuts and has a plan for quasi-universal healthcare coverage. But he's not particularly progressive, despite the Democratic Leadership Council's accusation that he is on the "far left," "McGovern-Mondale" wing of the party and will lead it straight to hell. In the 1990s, he was a darling of the DLC, and he governed Vermont as a budget-balancing centrist ("I was a triangulator before Clinton was a triangulator," he recently told the New York Times Magazine). If you want a great platform on everything from single-payer health insurance (yes) to the death penalty (no), Dennis Kucinich is definitely your man
Sorry, just because Dean opposed the American-Anglo invasion of Iraq, Howard Dean is no pacifist, and certainly no Dennis Kucinich. Dean is a pragmatist with a Democratic message, who is willing to fight BushCo head-on. More than anything, we need a candidate like Howard Dean who will take the battles to Bush where he lives, and where he thinks that he is invincible, i.e. the war and tax cuts for the rich.
