Howard Dean: Smug Yankee Elitist

So the good doctor Dean is at it again. First, he went and pissed off the traditional Democratic base by saying he wanted to be the candidate for the Confederate flag on a pickup truck crowd. So how to follow up with his new following? Let's piss them off by telling them how they should vote.

Just who in the hell does Dean think he is? If God, guns and gays are the most important issues to someone, why shouldn't they vote for the person most in line with their feelings? If those are the issues, those are the issues and no amount of elitist condescension by Dr. Howard Dean, or Senator John Kerry, or Representative Dick Gephardt will change that. The issues are what the people say they are, not what the politicians want them to be.

Howard Dean getting the Democratic nomination has got to be the Republicans highest hopes. The man has not figured out how to speak responsibly.

Dean sticks his foot in his mouth through a complete ignorance of people. His backtracking, his "apology," and his waffling on the Stars and Bars comments, along with his talking down to Southerners have almost guaranteed that he will lose the South in '04. I thought Kathleen Parker summed it all up pretty well today:

The whole episode smacks of classism if not racism: Northern Nobility embraces Southern Idiocracy. How long before one of them says: "Why some of my best friends are Southerners"?...

But the Confederate flag is tricky among Southerners - a volatile issue, the nuances of which are often lost on Northerners and other visitors to the kudzu states. Not everyone with the battle flag in his home or on his truck is a dangerous racist, though some are...

For many others - well-educated, prosperous, thoughtful Southerners, as opposed to the undereducated, uninsured, vacant-staring Walker Evans sharecroppers Dean apparently envisions - the Confederate flag is a symbol of Southern history, of battles fought and lost, of family members valiant and dead, of a person's right to express himself even if it offends others.

Gephardt, Dean, Lieberman and Kerry probably needn't waste too much time trying to court the Southern pickup crowd.

Dean might as well spend the rest of his campaign in all those blue states and the red ones north of the Mason-Dixon.

Dr. Howard Dean is no better than any of the other proponents of institutionalized prejudice in this campaign. He just happens to conceal his prejudices a little better.