http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/09/03/franken_dean/print.html
On Monday, the New York Times' Adam Nagourney reported that the White House and the Democratic Party have both concluded that because of the increasingly polarized and evenly divided political landscape, the 2004 race will focus mainly on turning out the parties' core voters, rather than appealing to swing voters and independents. This means a campaign unlike 2000, with its muted, centrist tones, but one that delivers red meat to the parties' respective bases. And what is the temper of the Democratic Party base? They loathe Bush and everything he stands for -- he's become a lightning rod for dark and febrile passions in the same way Bill Clinton was (and is) for the GOP core. It's not just his harebrained ideological nostrums for how to reorder America and the world. They hate him and it's personal. They hate his frat-boy smirk, his phony fly-boy act, his cringe-inducing mangling of the language, his born-again sanctimony, even his Texas twang and his godforsaken, tumbleweed ranch where only someone as fence-post-dumb as W. would hole up in August. They hate him like their lives depended on it, lives that will certainly be unbearable if this bumbling extremist is reelected (or elected) in 2004.
The Democratic faithful lust for someone who will knock the cocky look right off George W. Bush's face -- as well as the arrogant mugs of Rove, Cheney and all the rest. Someone who knows how to fight just as hard as the men who scrapped and scraped and stopped at nothing until Florida, and the nation, was theirs. Right now, that looks like Howard Dean, the blunt-talking former wrestler. As one-time Clinton aide Sid Blumenthal, who knows a thing or two about taking off the gloves, says, "Candidates have to fight back hard, or else voters don't believe they'll fight for them."
By the sound of his official presidential announcement speech on Tuesday, John Kerry seems to have gotten this message. Kerry's rhetoric was tough and unflinching -- the Bush White House is ruled by "a radical ethic that ... glorifies a creed of greed" and a "swagger(ing)" foreign policy. "Being flown to an aircraft carrier and saying mission accomplished doesn't end a war," said the decorated Navy veteran. "And the swagger of a president saying 'Bring 'em on' will never bring peace. Pride is no substitute for protecting our young men and women in uniform. Half the names on the Vietnam Memorial are there because of pride -- because of a president who refused to admit he was wrong."
These are the kind of plain-spoken words that will rally today's Democratic voters. Kerry -- who has seemed to be sleepwalking on the campaign trail, guided by an old Al Gore, play-it-safe manual -- needs to keep saying them loud and clear if he wants to take the momentum from Dean. It was Kerry's one burst of hot lead -- a fiery putdown directed at chicken hawk Tom DeLay for impugning his patriotism -- that brought his campaign the biggest injection of Dean-like Internet donations so far. The message, again, could not be more clear for Kerry and the Democratic presidential pack (a group that seems more and more eclipsed by Dean's grass-fire campaign): Anti-Bush voters want a fighter -- not, God help them, a self-righteous Joe Lieberman who refused to muddy his trousers and stoop to the Bush team's level in Florida.
The rest of the article is good too.
Why Dean and Franken are so hot right nowAfter years of being kicked in the teeth by GOP bullies, Democrats have finally found two brawlers who know how to give it back.
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By David Talbot
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