"Dean Jumps into Lead Among Democrats in New Hampshire"

[ConservativeDemocrat]

"Bolstered by television advertising, Vermont Governor Howard Dean has jumped into the lead in ballot preference and favorability among likely Democratic primary voters in the New Hampshire Democratic Presidential Preference Primary according to the latest New Hampshire Poll. In ballot preference, Dean leads with 28% to 21% for Senator John Kerry and 10% for Congressman Dick Gephardt. As for candidate favorability, 63% of likely Democratic primary voters have a favorable opinion of Dean, 61% have a favorable opinion of Kerry, and 47% have a favorable opinion of Gephardt.

Awareness of Senator John Edwards, who also has been running television advertising in New Hampshire, has increased, but his ballot preference and favorability remain unchanged.

.....

Dean, Kerry, and Gephardt are the only candidates with double-digit ballot preference as Joe Lieberman continues to lose support in ballot preference.

.....

Of the 32% of likely Democratic primary voters undecided in their preference for president, 41% have a favorable opinion of Dean, and 32% have a favorable opinion of Kerry.

Of the 28% of likely Democratic primary voters saying they would vote for Dean, 61% have a favorable opinion of Kerry. Of the 21% of likely Democratic primary voters saying they would vote for Kerry, 43% have a favorable opinion of Dean."

Complete results and methodology.

A few personal observations. Despite the noise being made here by activists, Braun, Kucinich, Sharpton, Graham, and Edwards all look like toast. They've each managed to increase the public's awareness of their respective campaigns, but it hasn't translated into positive ratings. All their support combined is less than either Dean or Kerry. Stick a fork in 'em.

Use that fork on Lieberman too. He's loosing support. Gephardt isn't quite as bad, but he's also lost about a third of his support since April, and that is a sure sign of a campaign going nowhere. The only candidate who can authentically claim "they'd love me if only they knew me" is Clark, whose positives are tracking up with his awareness. Of course the man isn't running - which is kind of a handicap in an election.

- C.D.

[gully]

1. Woo HOO!

The Doctor's in the house!

[silverweb]

2. WoooooooHOO!!

Let's keep the momentum going - everyone bring a new one to the next Dean MeetUp!

My daughter was buying concert tickets today and another guy in line asked about the Dean for American button on her purse. He's been a Kucinich supporter, but realizes that campaign isn't really going anywhere, so he gave her his email address and she sent him a bunch of stuff on Dean and info on the next MeetUp. I've got two other friends possibly on the hook for the September MeetUp, as well. :D

One by one, MeetUp to MeetUp - each of us can make a difference in helping rebuild the American democratic community.

[Octafish]

3. Wait till they find out he's NOT from the Democratic wing...

... of the Democratic Party. Not everybody reads the fine print, eh Conservative Democrat?

[Cha]

4. They know who they are getting!

I give them more credit than you do!

[Octafish]

8. Another Green for Dean is great.

Just like another conservative or moderate independent for Dean. And I have no problem with that. The more the merrier when it comes to the Democratic Party. My thing is they get accurate and complete information on Dean.

My reasoning: First, and most importantly, Dean is a great guy and would make a great President, but I don't believe he has as good a chance as my horse in the general election. Secondly, and also important, Dean's record indicates he is a conservative Democrat. After 8 years of compromising with the crooks in the GOP, I've had it with them.

PS: Of course, I also agree with my horse's political philosophy and record as a Liberal Democrat. He just happens to be a real war hero as opposed to the incumbent, the unelcted Little Turd from Crawford, who pretends to be one. And he started going after the BFEE back in 1987.

[dajabr]

5. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

:nopity:

[Octafish]

10. Bummer.

Peace is not a monopoly.

[dajabr]

16. What's the "over / under" on when...

All these people are going to "find out" as you say. I've heard that warning for months and months, and yet his campaign keeps growing and growing.

It's too late for the other shoe to drop. Actually, it dropped years ago and Democrats of all stripes have noticed, and have flocked in greater numbers to support him. If that's going to be Kerry's big bombshell, it will be met with a collective yawn...

See, most people know that at the heart of being from the "Democratic Wing," simply means that you are from the "Oppositional Wing."

The Washington emmbeds running for President forgot that small detail after Jan 2000, and now they are paying the price for their political maneuvering.

[poskonig]

6. People already know that.

Kerry is polling better among rank'n'file democrats and women while Dean does better with men and is smoking everyone with independents.

[Octafish]

11. Dean is a great candidate, true.

If Howard Dean is the nominee, I will do all in my power to get him elected President.

One thing I especially appreciate is his candor. The guy has been busting Bush in the chops but good, whether it's John Ashcroft of the Iraq Invasion. How can I not like the guy?

BTW: Who would be his Attorney General? The guy is going to be busy prosecuting the 9-11 treason.

[Larkspur]

7. Howard Dean is from the same wing as Harry Truman was

Both have true grit, a pragmatic look at events, and innovative minds.

[Octafish]

9. Well-stated and I hope it stands forever true.

Dean is smart, tough, savvy, and pragmatic. He is a new type of Democrat. And I wish him the best.

The thing is, while he may come from the same wing of the Democratic Party as HST, Dean brings a much different set of experiences to the political arena. Truman fought in WW1 and ended WW2. And like the nation, Truman lived through and beat a Depression.

Dean didn't. His are a vastly different set of experiences — many top professions and first-class executive leadership. The thing is, that sort of thing Truman experienced, people can't just read about. It has to be experienced to be understood. And a President needs to understand to decide what is best. And decisions and who makes them are what politics are all about.

[Larkspur]

19. Dean governed through both Bush recessions

While not exactly the Great Depression, it was a Herculean effort to take Vermont's $70 billion deficit, pay off a quarter of the debt, and turn a defict into a surplus. Dean showed forward thinking when Bush II cut taxes and Dean made changes to the budget to save Vermont from facing the same fate as other states -- red ink.

[Octafish]

20. Billion or million?

Dean is a great guy and all, but did he clean up a $70 BILLION or $70 million deficit? If billion, he's magic and I know a casino in Detroit that won't know what hit 'em. What say, DU Friend Larkspur? Roulette or blackjack? 8^)

[Larkspur]

21. $70 million, not billion

my mistake, but still he turned Vermont's budget into a surplus.

And I don't gamble, despite there being 2 casinos in Eastern CT -- Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun-- where I live.

[ErasureAcer]

12. Funny, Kucinich is being compared to FDR on domestic issues...

I'd rather see another "new deal" democrat, than a "drop the nukes" democrat.

www.kucinich.us

[w4rma]

13. "I interviewed dozens of his liberal devotees, and they all know …"

…
Of course last week's Dean hype managed to do both at once. It knocked him down by setting him up, in a way. No longer was the question "Is he too liberal to be electable?" Reporters belatedly scoured his record and discovered a fiscal conservative who put balanced budgets before social spending in Vermont, who opposes federal gun control legislation and backs the death penalty for certain crimes. Now the make-or-break question about Dean became: "Will liberals desert him when they figure out that he's actually a moderate?" Then came other pre-fab worries about the problems of sudden success: Had Dean peaked too soon? Could his fledgling campaign handle the attention? And OK, maybe he was moderate enough to be electable, but was he likable enough? Was his reputation for "straight talk" just a euphemism for brusque and arrogant?

Hanging out with the local Dean folks was my way of getting out of what his campaign dismisses as "the media echo chamber," and trying to figure out what's really going on. I've lived here almost 20 years. I know the San Francisco Dean phenomenon is not a microcosm of what it will take to get him elected; I saw the way the GOP smeared House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- and pushed her to the center some -- by calling her a "San Francisco Democrat" before she even took over the leadership post. I know we're DLC founder Al From's worst nightmare. But I also saw some intriguing things following Dean around San Francisco at the end of July, and talking to his supporters the week after he'd gone. The Bay Area Dean machine is attracting more than the usual suspects: It's neither the Greens nor the City Hall regulars; it's neither the moneyed elite nor the rabble; it's not just the young and the hip; it's not ponytailed '60s holdovers -- it's all of them, and then some. I met Republicans and Ross Perot voters who were supporting the antiwar candidate who promises to repeal Bush's tax cuts. And I met Dean himself, and watched two speeches. You can't get his charisma without seeing him in person.
…
The UFCW crowd seemed a lot like Donna Brazile: They were ready to love everybody. Only the leftier candidates -- Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun, Gephardt and Dean -- showed up; Sharpton couldn't make it, but Kerry appeared by satellite, as befits his attempt to be a more centrist liberal. All of them got big cheers. These were the folks Al From tried to warn us about. But if Dean hadn't been red-baited by the DLC, you might well hear him as the moderate in the race. He criticized Kucinich and Moseley Braun's call for single-payer universal healthcare, the left's politically impossible dream, as well as Gephardt's expensive public-private hybrid. Kerry vied with Dean for the moderate mantle with his relatively modest healthcare plan, but overall Dean came off as the fiscal conservative in the bunch. Amazingly, he got the biggest hand from this union audience when he called George Bush a "borrow and spend, credit-card Republican" and promised to erase the deficit if he's elected.
…
One thing I don't worry about is that his lefty base doesn't know what he stands for, and will bolt when they realize he's a moderate. His base knows exactly how moderate he is. I interviewed dozens of his liberal devotees, and they all know the not-so-liberal aspects of his record. Someone at the Meetup lamented his staunch pro-Israel stance; several people I met said they differed with him on the death penalty. Brilliant says he has issues with Dean on all of his more conservative stands. "But he's not afraid to say what he thinks. Dean asks the fundamentally sound questions and does not have an ideological answer that trumps reason, as Bush does."
…
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/08/11/dean/

[DannyRed]

14. Exactly where I stand...

I am a hardcore leftist, and I support Dean.

Why?

Certainly not for his political stances and his record - if I were to support any Democrat for that it would probably be Kucinich (except for the religion abortion thingy).

Hell, I even had a lot of negatives regarding support for Paul Wellstone...and I still do.

HOWEVER, that's not the point.

The POINT is the campaign, it always has been and it always will be.

The problem with the Democratic Party is and remains that it is a top-down, stage-managed, controlling device used to gain votes from the left, progressives, liberals, unions, and minorities while paying lip services and doling out palliatives to those same groups...and ALWAYS swinging back to consistent servicing (meant in the most offensive of ways) of the corporate elite.

THIS campaign is different.

I actually think that Ol' Howie may have just let the genie out of the bottle by not only talking the populist line, but by actually and really building a populist, self-organized, seriously grassroots "each one teach one" campaign.

He had to do it in order to give himself a chance at the brass ring, and it was not done out of his deep seated liberal leftist tendencies...that's for sure.

But now it's done, and it's huge.

If it succeeds, and Dean deserts the base that he helped build and runs for the corporates again...then all those activated, fresh from a real grassroots victory are gonna go where, exactly?

If it succeeds and Dean does NOT desert the base that he helped build, then well and good, and good for him.

read Rosa Luxemburg -- Fight for reform with the people who are doing the fighting. Fight using the tools they choose to use. Prepare for and talk about revolution while doing it.

[western mass]

15. absolutely

Dannyred,

I'm a leftist and we're on the same page.

The Dem Party is adrift and clueless. The Dean campaign is a blueprint for what it's going to take to energize people behind this party again: aggressive, unapologetically partisan, vibrant at the grassroots level.

If other dems get a clue from the success of the Dean campaign, it's served its purpose. If all of the people who've been motivated by the Dean campaign to get involved in politics for the first time (or the first time in a long while)--and I've met very many--stay involved, this will be a wonderful thing. If Dean's charisma can push an aggressively anti-Bush message out into the mainstream, excellent.

For me, it's more about the campaign than the man.

[CWebster]

17. Exactlly

Your post and the one above it should be trasferred to the thread making issue with dean losing the Left.

The Dean campaign represents more than Dean. That is the key.

[Kahuna]

18. 32% undecided! Run, Wesley, run!