Reply #84: This is bad news...

[radio4progressives]

I think the Clinton camp read the writing on the wall and realized the smear campaign against Dean was backfiring.

Not only did the DFA endorse Dean, but so did the PDA, very early on, and they just held their Summit 2005 last weekend in Washington DC. which brought together a wide divergence of progressive political activist, I was pleased to read.

My fear is that this signing on of Ickes might be an operation to "reign" Dean in from being truly effective.

Call me paranoid, but that's how politics works doesn't it? I do not for a second believe that the Clinton's or the Kerry camp have any intentions of allowing real changes to take place that might impact party politics and it's structure. They certainly do not want grassroots political activism to be able to wrest control from their firm grip in terms of policy proposals, messaging, and party platform.

I think the strategy is to do an end run with a public endorsement in order to keep Dean under their control, also might be able to get Dean to relinquish his email lists.

So this endorsement is sending off alarms for me. I'm thinking Dean needs to say "thank you" - but "no thank you" in order to remain independent of both the Clinton and Kerry camps and in order to avoid being co-opted.

I just hope I'm wrong.