Howard Dean used these words several time in 04. He is more careful now when he speaks, but he has to be, I guess.
But he was exactly right in this interview with Andrew Gumbel from May 2004 in the Independent UK. It is getting more obvious every day we are in a fight for our party and our country, and actually our very existence.
I have been very proud of some of our Democrats lately, not all, but some. They are speaking out now...good for them.
The interview is archived and pay to read at the Independent now, but I found it at an alternative site. Here is the general link.
http://www.britreport.com/index.htm"We're in a civil war here," he told The Independent from the back of a car taking him from one Los Angeles event to another. "This is not the time to be nice. I'm not interested in accommodating people who don't respect our point of view."
When it comes to the war in Iraq, or the growing influence of Christian fundamentalism on public policy, or the mounting budget deficit exacerbated by targeted tax cuts for the wealthy, Mr Dean....does not believe there is room for compromise with the Bush White House, or any of the like-minded politicians he characterises as "right-wing wackos". (Ok, he had to stop using that phrase a while ago. Too bad, cause many of them are just that)
Instead, he believes, the Republicans need to be fought on their own turf, in places where ordinary working-class voters have been persuaded to vote Republican but may yet be open to the notion that they are betraying their own interests.
...."He told a rally in Los Angeles a few days ago: "Don't be afraid to sign on to a race where you think the candidate can't win. We must make sure not one congressional seat goes unopposed ... Never again are we going to be able to treat politics as a dirty business we don't want anything to do with. It is dirty, but it's on our doorstep and we're going to have to deal with it."
Andrew Gumbel had another two very interesting paragraphs. Since I can't find the whole article online , I will add one extra paragraph more than usual. Good stuff.
Mr Dean is much easier for a European audience to understand. His brand of politics - feisty, secular, and policy-driven rather than personality-based - would more easily find a home in a parliamentary system than in the US presidential one, with its near-mystical anointment of the commander-in-chief as someone who should always be deferred to and supported on the most urgent matters of state.
No danger of deference from Mr Dean. Events in Iraq, he said, showed President Bush was "almost inept as well as untruthful". Specifically, he wants to put an end to the practice, perfected by President Bill Clinton, of "triangulation", trying to defang the Republicans by advocating policies only slightly at variance with theirs, and getting back to the old-fashioned to-and-fro of a two-party system.
When I watch the British parliament when it is on C-Span, it is pretty obvious what he means by the difference. And we do need to get back to the two-party system with those good old-fashioned differences.
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