Dean - the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Or is that the Mouth that Keeps on Talking?

Either way, when the Democrats selected Howard Dean to be the party chairman, Republicans cheered. They were certain that Dean could not keep his mouth shut.

And they were right. It's bad enough that NBC did a story on it last night. A related story is here on MSNBC.

The old political math said that all a Democrat had to do to win was "fire up the base". The majority of the country would vote Democrat if you could just get them to the polls. That was the basis of the last presidential campaign - lots of inflammatory rhetoric plus a huge effort to turn out both new voters and existing ones.

It didn't work. The Republicans had an even better get out the vote campaign and shifting demographics now give the Republicans a slight lead in registered voters.

The only way that Democrats can win the next few elections is to appeal to moderate Republicans and swing voters. Some Democrats are doing this. Look at the number of stories about how the Republicans have been taken over by the scary Religious Right.

That's not how Dean sees it, though. He is still trying to fire up the base. Republicans? To him they are all dishonest.

"A lot of them never made an honest living in their lives," said Howard Dean on June 2 at a conference hosted by Take Back America.

On Tom Delay, Dean says:

This gentleman is not an ethical person, and he ought not to be leading Congress, period.

To put this in perspective, the leading Democrat Senators are Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. Clinton and Kennedy have been in numerous scandals and Byrd is a former KKK recruiter.

This isn't going to sway many Republicans to vote Democrat.

Dean is living in the past. He is also the first celebrity party chair. Most party chairs can say anything they want to a supportive crowd and it will not get out. Not so with Dean. The media is everywhere and he is a superstar so everything he says is reported.

Maybe he's really a Republican plant.