Reply #121: " Howard Dean, just like Dennis, had no name recognition and no money"

[Mairead]

I'd suggest you check your facts and reasoning.

Dean is and was a multi-millionaire, a 'member of the club', someone who bragged of his conservative Vermont record to the Cato Institute when speaking there.

Yet despite having been an 'open secret' candidate for months (about a year, I believe) before Dennis declared in February '03, in March '03 his numbers and Dennis's were both bumping along in the noise. (Dennis's press guy did the research and even made a nice little chart from the data. I kept a copy.)

But then Dean started getting pumped by shills like Nagourney at the NYT, who shamelessly --he was not merely open about his partisanship to an interviewer who questioned it, he asserted his entitlement-- gave Dean 110 positive references during the same period he gave 10 disparaging ones to Dennis, with the results you're trying to ascribe to Dean personally. That simply doesn't wash. The numbers ascribable to Dean personally are those of the year before that, i.e. zilch. Yes, once Nagourney et al. inflated Dean's balloon, Trippi and Dean kept it in the air...but I know of zero evidence to suggest it ever would have got off the ground hadn't it been for the initial Media Inc puffery.