Thursday, June 16, 2005

''Howard Dean's the man for a tough rebuilding job''

"Concerning Howard Dean's rhetoric: His Democratic critics misunderstand Dean's strategy. Moderate Republicans and independents are not the target group Dean has in mind to rebuild and move our party to the winning column once again. Nor is that group the responsibility of an opposition party offering a better solution. In this period of renewal, our target is the 40 percent of the electorate who have opted out of the system because we Democrats are not speaking to and for them. And our target are the Reagan Democrats who left us because we were not addressing their economic needs and speaking to them in populist, bread-and-butter, dinner table language.

What his critics fail to understand is that Howard Dean is leading in a manner we progressive populists have elected him to do. We tried the capitulation strategy favored by Berg and others in the party for the better part of the last 15 years under Democratic Leadership Council-based party leadership. We progressives, at least many of us, endured and even support their attempt out of misguided party loyalty."-from Stan Merriman's column in the Houston Chronicle.

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