The Big Green House

Monday, August 25, 2003

 

Say it now and say it loud

There were several things from this weekend I�d like to cover, but let�s start with the one burning a hole in my brainpan.

We saw Howard Dean speak yesterday.

OK, let�s back up a little. We spent most of the day scooting around the Market, looking for The Tasting Room. We were too stupid to Google for it before we left home & consequently never found the damn thing. We both thought that it was down in the Lower Market; it never crossed either of our minds to check Post Alley. C�est la vie.

When the time came, we headed up the hill to Westlake Center for the big speech. There was a relatively tiny area roped off in front of the stage, maybe big enough for a thousand people to stand comfortably. Since I knew that A) the Dean people were expecting upwards of 3,000 and B) Seattle has a long history of support for Democrats, we decided to hang back a bit. Which, as it turns out, was a good idea. They sardined as many folks as possible into the official viewing area. (Both the Times and the PI are saying 8,000 people showed up, the Dean site is claiming 15,000. My guess was around 5,000, but I�m no good at that kind of thing.) Science Girl is not fond of crowds, and I downright hate brushing up against sweaty strangers, so it worked out pretty well for us to be across the street by the mall.

I don�t know that I�m ready to drink the Dean for America kool-aid just yet, but I will admit that he made a lot of the right noises. The crowd certainly thought so, but they were mostly already aboard the bus. (There were a few Losers for Larouche skulking around the fringes of the audience. Those guys used to all be hard-core crazy old farts, but now they seem to be mostly young zombies in their twenties. Is this what happens to those kids you see on the side of milk cartons � they get brainwashed to go out and campaign for Larouche? I�m picturing a big, dilapidated ranch somewhere in Idaho, being used as an indoctrination camp.)

Perhaps I�m overly cynical when it comes to politics but I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall with this guy, although I can�t quite put my finger on why that is. Dean is fond of saying �We can do better than that� with regard to the current administration and while I wouldn�t argue with that at all, I would like to hear a few more specifics. He spent a lot of time telling us what an outright goober George Bush is. We already know that. What we want to hear is more about how a Dean presidency would be different. Telling us what he did as Governor is helpful, but he puts it out as if it would be oh-so-simple to expand those programs from the relatively small state of Vermont to the national level.

That said, I�ve got to give him credit for calling bullshit on the Republican-lite nature of the Democratic party as it stands today. He fired up the pissed-off Liberal in me on that count. Being a Democrat used to actually stand for something. I�m registered to vote as a Democrat, but that�s only because Washington State requires party affiliation to vote in the primary election. I haven�t felt like I was so much voting for anyone as voting against the conservative candidate, and it�s been that way since I first cast a vote in 1980.

I am a Liberal. I am proud to be one. You can piss up a rope if you don�t like that. Just because the various media have made the term into some sort of slur doesn�t mean I have to go along with it. I�m tired of this namby-pamby, appease-the-conservatives shit coming from the Democrats. Give people a little credit from time to time. "Is it right or is it wrong?" is the only question, not "is it going to play in Peoria?". It�s time for progressives of all stripes to stand up on their hind legs and be counted. The alternative is four more years of Bush. Dean�s slogan is �Let�s take the country back�; I don�t know if he�s the guy to do it, but at the very least he�s talking about it.

bmarkey 8/25/2003 08:20:00 PM