If I understand it correctly, the argument against Dean is simple. We in the Democratic Party can not afford to have him as our presidential candidate because he is too liberal to defeat Bush. If we are serious about victory, then we need a centrist candidate - someone like Clark, Kerry, or Liberman.
I disagree!
We have absolutely no idea what Dean's true political views are. He could be leftist, centrist, or whatever. Perhaps he just wants to be a president. Only he knows what he wants. All that we know is that he has chosen to run a left-of-center campaign. Now, we could take his campaign at face value and infer that he is too liberal to be elected, which seems to be what those who criticize Dean are asking us to do. But this strikes me as remarkably simplistic.
Since when do we believe that politicians say what they mean? Any thinking person knows, or at least should know, that what politicians say while they campaign may or may not reflect their true beliefs. As voters, we have absolutely no way of distinguishing those candidates who tell the truth and those who dissemble.
The only thing that we can be certain of is that Dean has spent considerable time thinking about how to win the presidency, and that the left-of-center campaign is an integral part of his larger electoral strategy.
So what might his over-all strategy look like? I suspect it is quite simple -- win the Democratic nomination by going to the left and then win the American presidency by going to the center. Since the primaries are front-loaded, the nomination will come quickly and leave plenty of time to develop a centrist persona.
The genius of this approach is this. In May, when Dean moves to the center, the left will believe that he is a liberal who is making a strategic move to win the presidency, while the center will believe that he is a moderate who is only now showing his true colors. In short, both will assume that the other is naive and both will support Dean as their candidate. Brilliant! But is it honest?
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