Idea of the Week: Damage Control

[Democrats unite]

It's been a very strange week for Gov. Howard Dean. It was supposed to be the week in which he repositioned himself as a "centrist" and addressed the light-on-issues nature of his campaign with two big speeches on foreign and domestic policy. Instead, as DLC President Bruce Reed told The New York Times: "One day Dean says Americans are no better off with Saddam out of power; now he seems to be saying Democrats are better off with Bill Clinton out of power."

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=252272



This article pretty much sums up why I support the DLC over Dean any day of the week.


edit: spelling

[gmoney]

1. Well, Clinton did allow some stupidly damaging things...

...that look VERY Republican. Gutting welfare, deregulating media, NAFTA, loosening environmental regulations, and financial deregulation that set the stage for Enron, WorldCom and even Harken... just because the economy was going well, that's no reason to let business interests rewrite all the laws. Clinton was hardly a president for the people, although many people benefitted by trickle-down from the corporate prosperity that occurred on his watch, and the "land rush" of the internet.

Clinton did show enormous lapses of judgement regarding fundraising, and by fooling around with Monica, among other things.

Dean HAS to position himself as his own man, not Clinton II the way Gore was perceived by many.

[snoochie]

2. I mostly agree

We can't pin all of the financial shenanigans on Clinton, though.

A lot of that was in the Contract on America that Newtie engineered.

And he smartly vetoed the Securities Litigation Reform Act, which Lieberman, Feinstien, and Mosely-Braun voted to overturn so that it's harder to hold those guilty of fraud accountable.