Lokk at the polls. Back before September/October vitually all polls that included "other" as a selection for either who one would select as the nominee, or how they would vote in the general election presented the percentage of "other" with a low of 2 percent and a high of 4 percent. AS the polls begin to reflect Dean as the frontrunner, these numbers begin to clinmg, 6 percent, 7, 8, and then in the last three weeks 7 percent, 10 percent and most recently 16 percent. As the media presents and even the pundits begin to discuss the nomination of Dean as being more likely, the percentage of Democrats and independents who state that they will vote for "other" becomes higher and higher.
The polls that state that Dean is the candidate of choice also show higher figures of people who are seeemingly deciding that they will select another candidate if as polls state that Dean is most likely to become the nominee against Bush. Also the longer Dean has stayed in the frontrunner slot, the higher the percentage of Democrats who also state that they beleive that Bush will win in 2004 has grown larger. It is more likely that a borkered solution will present a better channce of holding the party together than if Dean is the nominee, which is why the DNC and the DNC have been very concerned and critical of a Dean nomination.
In many polls in which Dean is shown to be the frontrunner, he is also the candidate who against whom George Bush is seen as having the widest margin of beating withmost of these figures showing Bush trouncing Dean by 15 points.
On bit of factual information, totally unrelated to the pundits is the fact that while Dean was Governor, more and more democrats left the Democratic Party and joined the Vermont Progressive Party, and this is largely attribited by Vermont Democrats to Deans conservatism, and Dean was largely criticised by Vermont Democrats, and in particular the liberal wing of the democratic party in Vermont as being the cause of this loss. At the time the Dean was Governor of Vermont, the entire Vermont Democratic Party was becoming more and more left leaning, and even Deans own long term advisor Harlan Sylvester attributes the fact that the Republican Party did not put up any viable candidates to oppose Dean was that they felt they didnt need to as they already had Dean ( a Direct Quote by Sylvester is:
"The joke among a lot of Vermont Republicans was that they didn't need to run anyone for governor because they basically had one in office already," said Harlan Sylvester, a conservative Democratic stockbroker and longtime adviser to Dean.
(St. Petersburg Times, July 6, 2003)
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/DVNS_Howard-Dean.htm)
Sylvester has advised Dean both personally and politically for thirty year< so one would suppose that the one person who has supported Dean in all his political efforts from the first day he began to run for political office, would have a rather clear picture of his friend and political collegue).
There is one major party in Vermont now, and tat is the Republican Party, while the liberal and progressive parties now consist of two parties of moderate size, the Vermont Progressive Party, and the Vermont Democratic Party) Currently this has resulted in the Republican Party having as complete control of Vermont Government as currently exists in Washington). A number of Vermont Democrats shoe held seats in the Vermont Legislature simply quit due to the fact that the head of their own party spent most of his time opposing his own party, and working to support the political agenda of the Republicans, who for the most part got all of their party's agenda passed while Dean was Governor, from taxation to cuts to welfare and other social spending, while business was given free rein, environmetal policies not enforced, and Dean actively assisting large corporations get around such policies,with corporate executives speaking glowingly of how Dean greased the wheels fo business in Vermont.
(Business leaders were especially impressed with the way Dean went to bat for them if they got snarled in the state's stringent environmental regulations. When Canada's Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd. wanted to build a new manufacturing plant on 700 acres of Vermont farmland in the mid-'90s, for instance, Dean greased the wheels. Husky obtained the necessary permits in near-record time. "He was very hands-on," says an appreciative Dirk Schlimm, the Husky executive in charge of the project.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_32/b3845084.htm)
While Dean received a great deal of Republican support as Governor in Vermont, one cannot expect the same degree of defection of Republicans from Bush to Dean for in the General Election)
But given the direction of the polls, one can expect many democrats to either write in another candidate, or not vote at all, as many , like myself, see that choice between Bush and Dean as virtually no choice at all, given Deans fiscal policies.
Many democrats particularly long term democrats, liberal and progressives are of the belief that all policy stem from economic policy) Social policies and Social conditions stem from economics, and as far as economics goes, Dean has consistantly shown himnself to be as conservative as any Republican. His record as Governor directly mirrored Republican Fiscal policies, of favoring business interests over all other interest, and cutting social spending to balance budgets rather than raising taxes on the wealthy, which was anathema to Dean as Governor.
He also has the reputation for speaking the party traditional democratic party line when there are no issues at hand, but when their are issues or legislation directly in front of him, if it comes to the environment or cutting wide swath for business, business wins If it comes to raising taxes on the rich or cutting heath care benefits to the elderly and disabled, the rich got to hold onto their money, and those on limited incomes had them limted more by losing prescription drug bnefits, or having the cost of receiving these benefits increased)
If you accept the parts of the polls that place Dean squarely as the front runner, you must acccept the fact that Dean being in this place is also resulting in an ever growing percentage of the Democratic electorate deciding that they will vote for "other" and not Dean.
Right now, even though there is no third party candidate running, the percentage of people who are decideing to vote for other, rather tan the front runner is approaching the same percentage as the third party candidate who gave the election of 1992 to Bill Clinton by syphoning off votes from George H.W. Bush..Ross Perot, who pulled 19 percent of the vote away from Republicans, allowing Clinton to win.
Deans history as Governor, and the effects his tenure and behavior as Governor had the effect of dividing the left end of the political spectrum. Almost in half. As this campaign progresses, the figures are beginning to reflect a similar split among Democrats. For Good or ill, either Dean is loved or hated and there seems to be little middle ground. Those who are openly stating that they will select anothercandidate, write in another candidate arther than Dean are growing daily. Since September, the number of Democrats and independants who satate they will select another candidate if Dean is the nominee has grown by as much as 800 percent, depending on the polls you look at. That is a big jump. Even if this shrinks by fifty percent, there are literally a few million Democrats and Independents who will decide to not vote, or write in for someone else. With those figures, Bush easily wins in 2004.
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