The doctor is in–in your face!

[Duder]

Howard Dean isn't afraid of the president, so why are Democrats afraid of Dean?
By Roger Simon

Burlington, VT.–In Howard Dean's sprawling campaign headquarters, where the staff appears to come in two ages–young and younger–it is a 4-year-old who really stands out. Kasey, a West Highland white terrier and the official campaign dog, lives to do her official campaign trick. "Kasey?" Joe Trippi, Kasey's owner and Dean's campaign manager, asks. "Would you rather work for George Bush or be dead?" Kasey immediately flops onto her side and extends her front and hind legs in a reasonable imitation of rigor mortis. Kasey will get a dog biscuit for this and the staff always gets a laugh, but the trick is significant in one respect: Trippi used to ask Kasey if she would rather work for John Kerry, one of Dean's Democratic opponents, or be dead (Kasey's response was the same), but now the Dean campaign has moved way beyond John Kerry.

Having raised more money than any Democrat in the second quarter of this year, having attracted more volunteers, in its estimation, than any campaign in history, and having reached the magical "top tier" status in the eyes of most media, the Dean campaign is now looking to take on Dubya himself. Trippi describes the next phase of the Dean campaign this way: "Over the next six months," he says, "we must be in George Bush's face."

And it intends to be there with more than doggie tricks. U.S. News has learned that the Dean campaign will spend between $100,000 and $200,000 to put up a new television commercial running this week in the unlikely (and probably unwinnable) state of Texas. In the ad, which Dean taped last Wednesday in Council Bluffs, Iowa, he wears a blue, open-necked work shirt, faces the camera, and says, "I want to change George Bush's reckless foreign policy, stand up for affordable healthcare, and create new jobs . . . . Has anybody really stood up against George Bush and his policies? Don't you think it's time somebody did?"

The pitch, which is airing only in Austin (at the same time President Bush is vacationing in Crawford, 87 miles away), is to some extent a stunt but on another level is intended to send the message that Dean will cede no ground to Bush anywhere. "We want to go right into the belly of the beast," Trippi says.

More:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/11dean.htm

[AnnabelLee]

1. Locking--Dupe

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