"wait till they get a load of me."
Posted on 11/24/2003 7:01:44 AM PST by Pikamax
Dean's found a loyal following in Philly By CATHERINE LUCEY luceyc@phillynews.com
IT'S A slightly odd birthday party - a motley collection of students, young professionals and laborers crammed into the dark wood-panelled upstairs bar at Fergie's Pub, which is festooned with yellow and blue balloons.
And the guest of honor is nowhere in sight.
That's because it's a celebration for presidential candidate Howard Dean (the big 55), one of hundreds of small parties held for him across the country last Monday by his legions of intense followers.
"It's almost Stalinist. We're out celebrating the birthday of this guy," joked Jim Savage, 39.
This is the kind of hard core grass-roots support the feisty former Vermont governor has built up over the past year. He's managed to raise an astounding $25 million and go from "Dean who?" to the arguable front-runner against eight other Democratic hopefuls.
But the most unthinkable thing about the Dean campaign? He's somehow managed to fire up people in the typically cynical, apathetic 18-35 age group.
"Everybody's sick of George Bush," said Jennifer Powers, 32, head of Philly4Dean, the local Dean chapter, which has about 3,000 people on it's mailing list.
Most are angry about the war, the economy, the environment. And they don't like that many of the candidates - U.S. Sens. Joe Lieberman, John Edwards and John Kerry and U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt - have supported Bush's endeavors.
So when Dean came out swinging against the war and promising changes in taxes and health care, kids who never did anything political signed up.
"I've never been involved in a campaign before," Powers said. "That was a side of it that felt really corrupt to me."
Dean has also lured the younger crew with his savvy Internet campaign, fund-raising online and using meetup.com to organize get-togethers across the country.
Dean's definitely not the cutest or the smoothest candidate (John Edwards and Wesley Clark have him beat). In fact he's kind of short and angry looking.
Still, somehow he's cool.
"There is a possibility that a generation of voters is mobilizing around this candidate," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Of course, it's still very early in campaign season. But Dean so far has had unbelievable momentum, raising more than $25 million through September and rejecting matching funds. He has also picked up two major union endorsements.
He's pushing a new fund-raising line. He wants 2 million people to donate $100 each.
But with eight other candidates in the field and the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary still two months away, a lot can happen.
Jamieson said that right now the party is deciding if Dean can beat President Bush.
"He's doing well in debates in that he's coming out of debates fairly unscathed," she said. "Sometimes this type of vetting process makes the eventual nominee stronger."
Gov. Rendell, who hasn't endorsed a candidate yet, recently told the New York Times: "He's the only Democrat who can keep pace with Bush financially. And he wears well. He's not flashy or slick. He gives you direct answers to questions. He has the potential to be our strongest candidate."
Some Dean supporters think his electability also lies in the fact that politically he's a moderate.
Initially, his outspoken attacks on the war and that he signed gay civil unions into law in Vermont meant that critics lambasted him for being too liberal.
But Dean's actually a fiscal conservative, who thinks states should govern gun control and he supports the death penalty in some cases.
While governor of Vermont, he was tight with money, turning a budget deficit into a surplus. He also improved health-care offerings to many in the state.
He says he'll repeal the Bush tax cuts and provide universal health care.
"His record of governing in Vermont is not liberal," Jamieson said. "He's very hard to peg ideologically."
Dean took something of a winding path to politics. He was born into privilege, the son of a Wall Street banker who grew up on Park Avenue and graduated from Yale in 1971. He briefly went into finance, but changed his mind and went to Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, graduating in 1978.
He moved to Vermont after medical school and married fellow doctor Judith Steinberg in 1981. He was elected to the state legislature in 1982 and then won the lieutenant governorship in 1986.
In 1991, then-Gov. Richard Snelling died of a heart attack and Dean took over. He was governor for 11 years before bowing out.
His presidential campaign has been gaining steam for months and young voters have been climbing on board.
Hall noted that Dean's younger voters could be a deciding factor.
"We haven't really known what it would take to mobilize young people into active participation," she said. "He's attracting volunteers, he's attracting people who come to rallies."
Paula Rogers, 35, went to her first Philly Dean MeetUp in April.
"I knew I had to do more than just vote," she said. "I was frightened by this administration."
Now she's on the steering committee of Philly4Dean.
Philly4Dean now has 3,000 on its mailing list, up from a couple dozen in the spring. And new people come to almost every event. Dean also has the strongest student chapter at the University of Pennsylvania.
"He's just shown more of an interest in young voters than any other candidate has," said Conor Lamb, 19, head of Penn4Dean, which has about 25 active members and 100 on the mailing list.
Lamb has visited New Hampshire to work for Dean and plans to return over his winter break.
"The people working in these offices are my age," Lamb said. "It's people like that working the campaign on the ground and
they're going to be reason Dean has a chance to be elected."
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Really. These are the same people who think (and I use that word loosely in relation to them) that Bush is no better than and is the moral equivalent of Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler, etc.
Said in Philadelphia, one of the most left wing cities in the nation where lots of U of Penn (Bastion of Marxism) students attended these meetings. This is the best Dean can do in arguably his "center of his universe" (politically speaking)?
Crap like this just sends me off the deep end.
"wait till they get a load of me."
But Dean's actually a fiscal conservative...
Then, two paragraphs later:
He says he'll repeal the Bush tax cuts and provide universal health care.
So expanding the federal government to embrace about 17% of the economy (with commersurate taxation) is being fiscal conservative?
Look, I could take this stuff if Dean said different things on different days to different reporters. But it's all right here. Two paragraphs apart.
You know, that quote is just a LITTLE too cute. After all the liars exposed among reporters over the past few years, I sure hope her editor made sure that this guy really exists, and really said this...
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