YOU WANT TO GET RID OF HOWARD DEAN AND REPLACE HIM WITH HAROLD FORD? SUPPORT HILLARY CLINTON

The bad old days could be here again

Whenever I think about how terribly flawed Hillary and Obama are as candidates-- and are they ever!-- all I have to do is compare them to the pathetic pygmies and they grow in stature immensely. Today thereisnospoon put up a diary at DKos that I urge everyone to read who is actually considering voting for the Clintons are all the detestable Insider baggage they're dragging along with them. Is Hillary better than Giuliani? Yes. Is she better than Willard? Yes. Is she better than The Huckster? Yes. Is she better than Frederick of Hollywood? Yes. Is she better than McCain? Yes. Is she better than a tissue someone blew their nose in and threw away? Yeah, that too. But that's about as far as I'd go.

The truth is that the same forces that were desperate to squash Dean's presidential bid, and that tried every desperate measure to keep him from running the DNC, are still strongly at work in the Democratic Party. To be blunt, those forces are united under a Presidential campaign explicitly running on the record of the Democratic Party during the 1990s. In fact, the disgrace to progressive politics that is Terry McAuliffe isn't even lying low, but rather coming out in the open to to crow about the victory of establishment forces with "experience". They're battling right out in the open, nor are they making any pretense: the same anti-progressive forces that brought you NAFTA, triangulation, swing-state targeting, welfare reform, the DLC, video game censorship, line-item veto requests, the apotheosis of Alan "Bubbles" Greenspan, a near decade of personal scandals, and tamping down Al Gore's fire and putting him up on a ticket with Joe F'ing Lieberman, would like to return you to the good old days when they were in charge.

Howard Dean knows this. That is why the DNC is standing with the Culinary Workers Union against the preposterous lawsuits being brought to bear by the suppress-the-vote-if-at-all-possible forces of the 1990s Establishment. Dean can't come out and endorse any specific candidates (or specifically oppose any of them), but I guarantee you he knows who is on his side and who isn't.

Just a hint: it's not candidates who ally themselves with Terry McAuliffe.

In fact, if the Establishment wins the presidential primary, you can be certain of one thing: Howard Dean will be gone as head of the DNC faster than you can say "people-powered politics." As the imitable Bob Johnson says in response to Bill Clinton's preposterous claims about his favored Establishment candidate's being an "insurgent candidate":

Yeah, that's why Howard Dean and the DNC just joined the Culinary Workers union against the Clinton's voter suppression lawsuit in Nevada, a suit Bil was supporting publicly today.

If Clinton wins the nomination, the real insurgent, Howard Dean, would be out on his ass so fast he wouldn't have time to pack his two old suits.

Then in comes Harold Ford, Terry McAuliffe and their rest of the old DLC machine.

You can take that to the bank. Those who support the Establishment in this primary must know that they are, in effect, firing Howard Dean and his supporters in the DNC. To claim not to know this is either amazing disingenuousness or unbelievable naïveté.

It won't be done publicly, of course. Like with everything done by the Establishment, it will be done quietly. Incrementally. Subtly. Under the table. Since DNC chairpersons don't usually stay on more than four years, it will be claimed that Dean's departure is simply business as usual. But it won't be, of course. The arms of the electors will be twisted; they won't commit career suicide.

Look for DLC chair Harold Ford to step in as head of the DNC, and to bring all of his DLC underlings with him.

This primary presents us a choice between moving ahead to 2008 and beyond, and moving back to the 1990s. It presents us a stark choice between Howard Dean and Terry McAuliffe.

Too bad Edwards is the invisible man. The longer this race goes on, the harder it is to understand why any Democrat would prefer Hillary or Obama. Like I said, they're both better than any Republican, but that sure isn't saying much-- and Edwards is better than either one of them-- by a mile.


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