Howard Dean: Sarah Palin Could Beat Obama

Interesting:

Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman who helped Democrats capture the White House in 2008, warns that Sarah Palin could defeat President Obama in 2012.

Dean says his fellow Democrats should beware of inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom that Obama would crush Palin in a general-election contest next year.

“I think she could win,” Dean told The Hill in an interview Friday. “She wouldn’t be my first choice if I were a Republican but I think she could win.”

Dean warns the sluggish economy could have more of a political impact than many Washington strategists and pundits assume.

“Any time you have a contest — particularly when unemployment is as high as it is — nobody gets a walkover,” Dean said. “Whoever the Republicans nominate, including people like Sarah Palin, whom the inside-the-Beltway crowd dismisses — my view is if you get the nomination of a major party, you can win the presidency, I don’t care what people write about you inside the Beltway,” Dean said.

I think Dean's right that the inside-the-Beltway thinking is not truly representative of the country and large and while the Beltway folks may quickly dismiss her, her appeal in the real world will be much higher. Can she win? Hard to say. I still think she's damaged goods thanks to the misinformation the media propagated against her, and leaving her job in Alaska early didn't help.

Will Obama Get a Primary Challenger...or Two...in 2012?

I've long expected Hillary Clinton to be a primary challenger to the president in 2012.  I laid out that whole scenario in a previous post here.  Now some are starting to wonder if Howard Dean might be considering a run. First he made a statement opposing the Ground Zero Mosque, opposing Obama's position and rhetoric, and then came out and said the White House is out-of-touch with real America and that WH aides need to "get out of Washington".

Could this be the resurgence of Howard the Donkey?  A candidate the liberal left will go ga-ga over after their disappointment with Obama?

That would be fun.

Political Video of the Day

I posted earlier about Howard Dean's bogus charges that Fox News was racist in their actions regarding Shirley Sherrod. Here's the tape of Chris Wallace smacking Howard the Donkey around on the issue:

Howard the Donkey Brays Again

Don't any of these libs pay attention to actual facts?

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean accused Fox News of promoting racism, including in the recent fracus over the Obama administration’s forced resignation of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod.

“Let’s just be blunt about this … I think Fox News did something that was absolutely racist,” Dean charged on “Fox News Sunday.”

Dean said Fox helped promote the charges that Sherrod – who is black – made racist comments about white farmers, which led to her forced resignation Monday.

The fervor was built around a video of Sherrod speaking at an event hosted by the NAACP shown online by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart.

There's one big problem here - the timeline. The left, including Howard Dean, is blaming Fox News because Obama fired Sherrod, but Fox didn't even run the story until after she was canned. One of the people who called her and demanded that she resign told her that she would be on Glenn Beck's show that night so she had to resign immediately. Only problem, the story didn't show up on Fox until O'Reilly's show aired AFTER she had already quit.

The whole charge against Fox is bogus and it's just another part of the lefty playbook that demands that critics of this Administration be declared racist.

Health Care Video of the Day

Howard "The Donkey" Dean wants to kill Obamacare. Yeah, you read that right. The problem for Howard is it's not lefty enough, and even more astonishingly Dean admits the GOP rhetoric about the bill is correct. Too bad no one in the media is interested in covering the former DNC Chairman's remarks:

Something for Congress to Aspire to

And it's just a short walk from the Capitol:

No known ghosts -- but the Historic Congressional Cemetery is home to a number of storied Americans, including Abraham Lincoln's most famous photographer; one of the conspirators who was hanged for Lincoln's assassination; the original twentieth-century G-Man; and the composer who gave the "Monte Python" gang their start.

Not too shabby for the graveyard long overshadowed by its more famous cousin across the river, in Arlington.

Tucked away in Southeast Washington, a short walk from the Capitol Building, the Congressional Cemetery began as the burying ground for the local parish of Christ Church, and welcomed its first souls in 1807. For decades, the cemetery served as the capital's sole place of burial for members of Congress. In all, nineteen senators and seventy-one members of the House of Representatives lie here.

And the good news is there's room for plenty more.

Political Quote of the Day

From former Vermont governor, Dem presidential candidate and DNC chairman Howard "The Donkey" Dean:

“I think we’ve had quite enough capitalism in the last eight years.”

Well, Barack Obama and the Democrats are certainly trying to fix that.

Howard Dean Not a Happy Donkey

The former head donkey wanted to run HHS but The One said no:

Former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean is making no secret of his dashed desires to become a member of President Obama's Cabinet, after he got passed over yet again for the job of health and human services secretary

"I was pretty clear that I would have liked to have been Secretary of HHS but it is the president's choice and he decided to go in a different direction," Dean was quoted saying on Monday in the Huffington Post after Obama made clear Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius was going to get the job.

Dean, who is a doctor and the former governor of Vermont, was talked about as a possible health secretary but was passed over for former Sen. Tom Daschle. After tax problems derailed Daschle's nomination, Dean got snubbed again.

Obama plans to announce his choice of Sebelius for the post Monday afternoon. She was the insurance commissioner for Kansas before getting elected governor, experience that helped convince administration officials she could handle the finer details of the debate over expanding access to health care.

Dean was not even vetted by the administration, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel did not have a working relationship with him. White House officials expressed some concern about Dean's ability to work with the administration as part of the team.

There clearly were few good feelings between Obama and Dean. Dean was pretty much ignored during the campaign even though he had a major role in giving the Dems the majority in Congress in 2006.

I guess Obama wasn't confident that he could keep the volatile Dean under control.

Liberal Groups Question McCain's Health

How desperate is the left to stop McCain? This desperate:

Two liberal groups – one of them directed by a brother of the Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean – will begin running a graphic attack advertisement Thursday morning raising questions about Senator John McCain’s health. Showing vivid and unflattering images of the fresh scar that appeared on Senator McCain’s face immediately after his last operation for melanoma skin cancer eight years ago, the commercial ends with a screen headline that reads, “Why won’t John McCain release his medical records?” (Mr. McCain, 72, did invite a limited group of reporters to inspect more than 1,100 pages of his medical records in May, though he gave them only a three-hour window in which to review the documents.)

The commercial is among the harshest to run against Mr. McCain yet, seeking to exploit the sensitive issues of health and age. Officials with the groups running the ad, Brave New PAC and Democracy for America, said they were only showing the spot initially on MSNBC over the next few days, a limited run intended to draw news media attention on a network that has increasingly catered to liberal tastes.

Officials at the groups, both of which are political action committees that rely on individual donors, said they hoped to show the spot on stations in battleground states in the coming weeks as well. But it is unclear if individual stations will accept the spot: Leighton Akio Woodhouse, a spokesman for Brave New PAC, said late Wednesday that CNN declined to accept the commercial after reviewing its contents this week.

The ad comes from the same two groups that recently released an advertisement questioning whether Mr. McCain’s time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam adversely affected his ability to lead.

Democracy for America has as its chairman Howard Dean’s brother, James H. Dean. Federal rules prohibit coordination between outside groups and campaigns or parties.

The crazier the left gets with this stuff, the more likely it is to backfire on them.

Political Quote of the Day

From Howard (the Donkey) Dean, chairman of the Democrat National Committee:

"If you look at folks of color, even women, they're more successful in the Democratic party than they are in the white, uh, excuse me, in the [laughs] Republican party."

Tell me again which party is injecting race into the campaign?

Stop, or I'll Say Stop Again!

The chaos continues in the Dem party despite the Obamessiah's victory declaration last night:

In the absence of a concession speech from Sen. Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night, top figures in the Democratic Party are set to go public, urging all uncommitted officials to declare their presidential affiliations.

Sources have confirmed that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, and an official with the Democratic Governors Association are planning to release a public statement on Wednesday morning requesting that the party close its ranks and prepare for the race against Sen. John McCain.

The move, which had been anticipated but seemed unnecessary following Obama's clinching of the nomination on Tuesday night, is an indication that few figures beyond Clinton's utmost loyalists are willing to stomach a prolonged vacation period for the New York Democrat to make up her mind.

Rather than continue to stir things up the Dem leaders would be smart to just ignore Hillary and go on down the road with the campaign. Whether she concedes or not doesn't change the delegate math, and every day they focus attention on her they take away from their own inexperienced and unqualified candidate.

Hmmm. Maybe that's their plan all along...

It's Not About Me

Howard Dean made some remarks to the Dem Convention Rules and Bylaws committee regarding the ongoing battle for the Dem nomination, and one line in particular caught my eye:

"We are going to nominate either the first woman or the first African-American to our party,” he says.

He thanks all the candidates, "especially Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama."

“These two candidates have helped transform our party”, he continues. “And have shown that Democrats can win everywhere."

"When we decided on a 50-state strategy I'm not sure we decided that all 50-states would have a hard-fought primary," he says.

He then delivers a long anecdote about a conversation with Al Gore he had in 2004 when he had dropped out of the presidential race and was angry at the party.

“Finally, Al said to me, you know its not about you its about your country,” Dean says. at the time, no one could have said that to me – not even my wife – except for Al Gore.”

This would be the same Al Gore who so desperately wanted to win in 2000 that he put the country through weeks of legal turmoil and even tried to disallow the votes of overseas military personnel. That fight wasn't about "the country", it was about Al Gore. Period. He should listen to his own preaching.

Can Democrats Win Without Scrapping the Electoral College?

According to Time Magazine, Howard Dean has some thoughts on the Electoral College:

In an interview, Democratic Party boss Howard Dean calls for the end of the electoral college: "It’s unrepresentative of where the American people are. It was fine for the days of the Pony Express, but it’s not necessary to avoid a popular vote on Presidents now.”

Why would Dean want to make such a change. A writer at the Huffington Post gives a possible scenerio for November:

Barack Obama will win California and New York and all the blue coastal states by huge margins - he will be millions of votes ahead on the basis of New York, California, Illinois and Massachusetts alone. Barack could be as much as 5,000,000 votes ahead out of those four states and what will prevent it from being even larger is minimum focus on those states by the nominee in the fall. But remember, you win by one, you win by a million, you still are limited in your electoral college votes.

He will win these states by margins that may well give him a popular vote victory. He also will get more votes in states where Kerry was non-existent, like Alabama, but he won't win those states, or their Electoral College votes.

So if Obama wins the popular vote by five or ten million votes, he wins the White House right? Well, no. Because he hasn't picked up the needed 18 Electoral College votes.

Jim Geraghty has some thoughts:

(First reaction: Hey, guys, fix your own nominating rules so that you count all 50 states before you start mucking around with the Constitution.)

I wonder if we're witnessing a new Democratic strategy for well beyond the 2008 election — scrap the electoral college (a challenge, obviously) and nominate a candidate who can "run up" the vote totals in the areas Democrats already run well — big cities and university towns.

Here are a couple of things that are worth looking at. First of all, the 2000 and 2004 electoral maps. Do we really want the presidency decided by a handful of heavily populated (and heavily Democrat) counties?

Secondly, I offered my own suggestion of how to revise the electoral college, and I think it makes more sense than scrapping the whole thing. You can read it here.

McCainPedia

The ever resourceful Dems have a new online tool:

The DNC will tomorrow launch "McCainPedia,"a wiki-like hub of their opposition research on the GOP nominee.

The site features a bevy of articles and documents organized into such categories as "economy," "security" and "ethics."

Unlike Wikipedia, though, the general public (and McCain's campaign) can't offer their own edits to the material.

The goal is to not just provide a one-stop-shop of anti-McCain information but to underscore the party's commitment to using technology to get their message out. In addition to the text, they've included video, some of it culled from the committe's trackers who've been following McCain across the country.

"While the base of the Republican Party continues to shrink, Democrats are growing our ranks by trusting the American people with the facts of John McCain's own record," said Howard Dean in unveiling the site.

So, Democrats "grow their ranks by trusting the American people with the facts of John McCain's own record"? Then why didn't they do that long ago? They should have been telling America about McCain back in the 80's and maybe Reagan wouldn't have beaten them so bad.

Cindy McCain and Her Tax Returns

Cindy McCain is not going to release her tax returns....ever, and the lefties are in a lather about it:

Cindy McCain, the wife of Senator John McCain, said in an interview televised Thursday that she would never release her tax returns, even if her husband was elected president and she became the first lady.

Mrs. McCain, who has a significant stake in a beer distributorship in Phoenix that her late father helped found, is wealthier than her husband and files her taxes separately from him. In an interview broadcast on NBC’s “Today,” Mrs. McCain, who has cited privacy concerns for her children, said she had no intention of releasing her returns.

“This is a privacy issue,” Mrs. McCain said.

In 2004, Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, initially said she would not release her personal income tax returns, also citing family privacy. After criticism, she released a small part of her returns.

The Democrats have seized on the issue, noting that Mr. McCain had benefited from her wealth — and, in particular, from the use of her corporate jet.

“What is John McCain trying to hide?” Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “Throughout this campaign, he has acted like his own calls for openness and accountability apply to everyone but himself.”

John McCain isn't hiding anything - he released his returns. Cindy has filed separate returns for the entire 28 years they've been married, and since nobody is electing her to anything, I don't have a problem with her maintaining privacy over her financial matters.

Yes, the Obamas and Clintons have released theirs, but they file jointly. If their spouses filed separately I wouldn't have any problem with them withholding their private information.

Being a candidate means you're going to have to release a lot of personal stuff, but being a spouse doesn't.

Dems May Want to Rethink Going on Fox News

Hillary and Obama made recent appearances on Fox News and did fairly well, but Howard the Donkey got a beating from Chris Wallace this morning over the McCain "100 years" ad:

Chris Wallace: "Governor, why are you distorting what McCain actually said?"

DNC Chairman Howard Dean: "Well I'm not. I actually have what he actually said and if the Republican National Committee would like to pay for the whole six minutes I would be happy to do it. I've said publically that John McCain said that he wants to keep troops in Iraq for up to 100 years. He himself said that some of that could be occupation like South Korea or Germany. But, the fact of the matter is that first that anyone who thinks that we can keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years without them being victimized by roadside bombs, suicide bombers and militias I think is wrong and needs to look carefully at their judgement. Secondly, Americans don't want their troops in Iraq for 100 years no matter what they're doing over there. We can't afford that we need the money over here."

Chris Wallace: Governor, lets take a look at what John McCain actually said, it won't take six minutes.

John McCain: ...We've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years. That's fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.

Chris Wallace: Governor, you not only left out the part as you said where you left out the part on where he talked about Americans keeping the peace very much as we have for a half century in Japan and North Korea, you also took the part where he said that would be fine with me but then you clipped out the very next words he said which were, "As long Americans aren't being hurt or killed." The non-partisan group FactCheck.org said, "What the DNC ad conveys is the opposite of what McCain said."

Chris Wallace: ...I'm just saying when he (McCain) says that "that would be fine with me" and then you clip out the next words which are "as long as Americans aren't getting hurt" and an independent group says you've completely distorted what he said. You've got no problems with that?

DNC Chairman Howard Dean: Our problem is that John McCain is distorter.. er, distorting... what he said.

At least Howard keeps his record intact as the most inept DNC chairman ever.

Memo to the RNC: Stop Whining and Run Your Campaigns

I don't know about you but I'm getting a little tired of each side in the campaign demanding apologies, condemnations, you name it, from the other side. The latest battles are over campaign ads, this time with the RNC complaining about a DNC anti-McCain ad:

MIAMI - The Republican National Committee demanded Monday that television networks stop running a television ad by the Democratic Party that falsely suggests John McCain wants a 100-year war in Iraq.

The ad says President Bush has talked about staying in Iraq for 50 years, then plays a clip of McCain saying, "Maybe 100. That'd be fine with me."

The announcer then says: "If all he offers is more of the same, is John McCain the right choice for America's future?"

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said the ad deliberately distorts what McCain, the likely GOP presidential nominee, said.

The committee's chief counsel, Sean Cairncross, said he sent letters Monday to NBC, CNN and MSNBC insisting that they stop airing the commercial.

At issue is McCain's answer, in January, to a question about Bush's theory that troops could be in Iraq for 50 years.

McCain said: "Maybe 100. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that'd be fine with me, and I hope it would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaida is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day."

Democratic Party chief Howard Dean said "there's nothing false" about the ad.

"We deliberately used John McCain's words. This isn't some ominous consultant's voice from Washington. This is John McCain's own words. And we've been very upfront about everything that he's said."

McCain is the victim of his own sarcastic sense of humor. He made the "100 years" comment as a smart-aleck aside to a question, but in this day and age, you can't afford to say anything that you don't want to hear in an opposition ad some day.

To the RNC: Quit whining, you bunch of sissies, and get back to trying to figure out how to win elections around the country.

Howard the Donkey: Democrats Are the Party of the Pope

From the Swamp:

You like the pope? Then you'll love the Democrats.

At least that's what Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean appeared to suggest today, in his party's weekly radio address. The former Vermont governor opened his address this morning with a welcome to Benedict XVI, making his first visit to the United States as pope.

"His visit reminds us of the Catholic values of social justice, working for the common good, and caring for those most in need," Dean says. "These are also the values of the Democratic Party."

In fact, when described more broadly, the pope's values don't line up easily with either of America's major parties. Like most Republicans, he opposes abortion and embryonic stem-cell research; like most Democrats, he's against the war in Iraq and the death penalty.

Those issues make up what Bendict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, was talking about when he coined "The Culture of Life." President Bush has used the phrase in a narrower sense, focused on abortion and embryos.

Benedict has been careful, visiting Washington and New York during this political season, to avoid even appearing to weigh in on the 2008 election - beyond saying that religious believers should be allowed the freedom to express their faith in public life.

I think both parties are treading on dangerous ground if they wish to claim that God or the Pope sides with them more than the other guys, though certainly no Pope could ever be a Democrat simply because of abortion. There are lots of issues with gray areas, but that one's pretty clear cut.

Howard Dean Sounds Worried

Howard Dean keeps making statements that indicate to me that he's worried about John McCain. The other day he went on about how McCain was a "weak candidate", and today he's trying to convince everybody that voters are worried about his age:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Thursday that swing voters participating in focus groups commissioned by the D.N.C. bring up John McCain's age unprompted.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean told reporters Thursday that swing voters are worried about John McCain's health and "old-fashioned" views.

At the age of 72, McCain would be the oldest newly elected president in U.S. history if inaugurated in 2009.

Referring to what Dean characterized as the party's most conservative focus group in Charleston, W. Va., the DNC chairman said "the women in that group were shocked that [McCain] believed health insurance shouldn't cover birth control pills and they were shocked about his belief in abstinence only education."

While knocking McCain's "old-fashioned" views, Dean maintained that the Democratic Party was unlikely to invoke McCain's age in the fall campaign.

They just did, and of course they'll bring up age every chance they get. They tried it against Ronald Reagan in 1984 and it probably won't work any beter this time. And those "old fashioned ideas" are the values that a majority of Americans still hold dear.



Dean has also added the refrain that he was more afraid of Romney than he is of McCain. That's just silly.

Howard the Donkey's Leadership Questioned

Most of us on the right applauded the Dems decision to elect Howard Dean as chairman of the Democrat National Committee. He hasn't let us down, though he is creating a little chaos for his own party:

WASHINGTON — The turmoil in the Democratic presidential race has presented a sharp test of Howard Dean’s low-profile approach to leading the Democratic National Committee, bringing calls from many Democrats for him to take a more aggressive role in defusing the threat of a protracted and divisive nominating fight.

After months in which he was largely absent from public deliberations about how to avert a risk to the party’s hopes of taking the White House in November, Mr. Dean stepped forward last week to say he wanted the contest resolved by July 1 and for Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to tone down their attacks on each other.

Yet three years after he won election as the party chairman by running largely as an outsider, it is not clear that Mr. Dean has the political skills or the stature with the two campaigns to bring the nominating battle to a relatively quick and unifying conclusion.

Indeed, 24 hours after he made his remarks, Mrs. Clinton said she intended to keep fighting for the nomination through the summer, if necessary. It was an unmistakable rebuke to Mr. Dean, who has never had good relations with the Clintons.

Nobody is going to tell Hillary when to quit, least of all Howard Dean. Even if the superdelegates meet in July and announce a winner, Hillary will not leave the race, nor will she have to, until the actual votes are cast in Denver. I'd say the odds of a convention fight are pretty good.