Reply #12: I can't speak for every Dean supporter

[Fleshdancer]

but as for myself, I just wanted the Kerry campaign to denounce the ad and that would be enough for me. If the role was reversed and an ex-Dean campaign worker joined a shadow group that ran disgusting, GOP-like ads against Kerry, I would denounce it and expect the Dean campaign to do so as well. I would also expect Kerry to make the same legitimate points Dean did and ask the same questions.

For anyone who's interested, here is exactly what the Dean campaign said the night the story broke:

"Who are the Americans for Jobs, Health Care and Progressive Values? Their press secretary is Robert Gibbs—who, until recently, worked on John Kerry’s campaign. Their Treasurer is David Jones, who used to raise money for Dick Gephardt. The president of the organization, Former Congressman Edward Feighan, was one of the earliest $2,000 contributors to Dick Gephardt’s presidential campaign.

And as their press release says, they plan to air this ad in other early primary states, and they’ve bought “over $400,000 of airtime in Iowa for ads focusing on Howard Dean’s positions on the issues of guns, Medicare cuts and NAFTA.”

We know John Kerry’s been attacking Dean on guns, and Dick Gephardt’s been attacking Dean on Medicare and NAFTA. And just two months ago the New York Times reported that, “at least at a staff level, the Gephardt and Kerry campaigns… are sharing information about Dr. Dean that helps fuel each another's attacks.”

Maybe it’s all a coincidence that this new secretive group-- founded just last month-- has picked up the same line of attack that Kerry and Gephardt have been using for months.

We hope that their campaigns would have nothing to do with this ad—the type of ad that Senator Kerry denounced as “political hate speech” when one like it was used against Senator Max Cleland in the 2002 election.

Will the Kerry and Gephardt campaigns, as well as the other campaigns, now step forward as Kerry did for Cleland and denounce this ad, as all Democrats should do?"