Zafar Sobhan'The conventional wisdom is that Howard Dean can't beat George Bush in the US presidential election in November. During a recent televised debate among the candidates for the Democratic nomination for president, the moderator Ted Koppel asked the candidates to raise their hand if they thought that Dean could beat Bush. In the most comical moment of the US political season so far, the only candidate who raised his hand was Dean!
The principal accusation leveled against Dean is that he is too left-wing to appeal to the general electorate and that George Bush would defeat him in a landslide. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. Dean could give Bush a real run for his money in November next and here's why.
Simply put, Dean is the only Democratic candidate so far who has shown anything like the political deftness that will be needed to credibly challenge Bush in November. The question his opponents need to ask themselves is that if he is such a poor candidate, how is it that he has run circles around the rest of the field all year?
The political story of 2003 in the US has been the emergence of Dean from an unknown ex-governor of a tiny state to the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. So far he has out smarted at every turn such political luminaries as John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, all of whom began the year with name recognition that dwarfed his. This time last year virtually no one in the US had even heard of Howard Dean.
It is Dean's political dexterity that is his most compelling attribute and one that will make him a formidable opponent come November. He was the only candidate who correctly diagnosed the groundswell of anger against Bush and made it the centerpiece of his campaign. Democratic voters have been waiting a long time for a candidate who doesn't apologise for being a Democrat and who promises to give the Republicans as good as he gets. Dean recognised and tapped into this sentiment and has been reaping the rewards ever since.
The second piece of evidence pointing to Dean's political adroitness is his building up of a network of supporters and volunteers through the internet. He is now in command of what amounts to his own political machinery. He has raised more money than any of the other candidates for the nomination and has in less than a year set up a formidable grassroots organisation of his people in every state in the country. Only among the chattering classes in Washington, where parroting the conventional wisdom of the day passes for political discourse, could such evidence of political virtuosity be contemptuously dismissed.
Dean is a master of the game and this is why he has dominated the run-up to the primary season. He has a commanding lead over his opponents in New Hampshire and is slightly ahead of the field in Iowa, the first two crucial battlegrounds in the Democratic primary. The word on the street is that Al Gore's high-profile endorsement is set to be followed by that of Tom Harkin, ex-senator from Iowa, which should safely deliver the state to Dean.'
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