Decision 2004: ABD vs. ABBA

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted January 1, 2004.

Howard Dean’s powerful momentum has made him the person to beat for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004. He has shocked many of the pundits who had dismissed him, infuriated the other candidates (particularly with his attacks on their Washington insider status), and generally freaked out the party establishment. As a result Dean has become "The Target,” attacked from all directions with verbal body blows, karate chops, kicks to the groin and an occasional wild haymaker.

Most of the attacks on Dean have come from what can be called the Anybody But Dean (ABD) party led by other Democratic candidates, notably Joseph Lieberman, Al Sharpton, Richard Gephardt and John Kerry. In their increasingly desperate effort to derail the Dean candidacy, Dean’s opponents have escalated their attacks to a level that could hand the Bush campaign powerful tools for victory in 2004, should Dean be the nominee.

In fact, as the New York Times reported on December 26, the Bush team believes that Dr. Dean’s rivals are “doing a great job” for the current President's re-election campaign. Republican strategists say that if Dean is nominated, they will portray him as "reckless, angry and pessimistic," while keeping the President's message upbeat. “They plan to use the Democrats' words to attack Dean in their ads, meanwhile keeping Bush personally above the fray."

Dr. Dean is the frontrunner because he has been able to establish himself as the candidate of change, and it has made him a lightning rod. How seriously the relentless attacks will weaken him has become a big question for the Democrats and independents who are more concerned about dumping Bush than about backing or blocking any individual Democrat. This is the ABBA Party – as in Anyone But Bush Again.

As Robert Greenwald, producer and director of the acclaimed documentary “Uncovered; The Whole Truth About the Iraq War,” put it, "I do worry that the Democrats are not thinking about the big picture and November in their aggressive efforts to really nail Dean." Some worry that the oft-repeated charges among Democrats that Dean is too liberal, too impulsive, or otherwise hard to elect will create a defeatist, self-fulfilling prophecy. Democratic candidates seem to have joined a number of pundits in working to establish a caricatured image of Dean that might be hard to overcome in November.

Leading the anti-Dean charge is Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who is 25 percent behind in the polls in neighboring New Hampshire’s primary. Kerry is positioning himself as the Dean alternative through constant attacks on Dean’s character. In a major speech Dec. 27, according to Patrick Healy in the Boston Globe, Kerry borrowed from the Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken," arguing that "two roads are diverging" for Democrats in the presidential race – "a road of confusion and contradiction" marked by "simple answers and the slip of the tongue," pursued by Dean, and "the road of strength and principle," by Kerry.

"New Hampshire's decision comes down to this: A choice between a candidate who, for all his anger, is on the wrong track economically and has no experience on the major security issues of the day, or a steady and consistent hand with experience in growing our economy and balancing the budget, and making America more secure," Kerry said. "It's a choice between anger and answers."

The other members of the ABD party are attacking Dean regularly as well. Al Sharpton has attacked Dean on race issues, Lieberman (along with Kerry) on Dean’s more pragmatic stance on Israel, Gephardt on Dean’s ability to beat Bush and his inexperience in foreign policy. Underlying all the attacks, though, are zingers aimed at character issues.

Dean is clearly unhappy with the situation, criticizing his party's national chairman, Terry McAuliffe, for not intervening to tone down the debate. Jodie Wilgoren of the New York Times reported that, while on the road in Iowa, Dean said, "If we had strong leadership in the Democratic Party, they would be calling those other candidates and saying, 'Hey look, somebody's going to have to win here.' Dean also suggested he didn’t control the legions of young people who have been brought into the fold as part of his campaign, should he not get the nomination, providing further fodder for his opponents."

Immediately the four ABD leaders pounced on Dean, launching a new round. John Kerry’s comments were typical: "Listening to Howard Dean's comments yesterday makes me wonder if he's worried about our party's chances for victory or his own personal political future," the senator said. "No one who really cares about the future of the Democratic Party would make such a divisive and threatening statement."

With the democratic establishment letting the Dean pummeling go forward, it may take a grassroots effort to halt the bloodbath. While the “regime change movement” led by MoveOn.org, the Sierra Club, union-funded groups and others, is loath to take the side of any candidate, they may be left with a badly wounded candidate when they are ready to swing into action. The message to the other candidates can be: focus your attacks on Bush, and offer a positive vision of how you will be an alternative to the current administration. Coincidentally, this actually seems to be what the voters want, at least the Democratic primary voters.

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