Accidental Blogger

"White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag
decals on the back ought to be voting with us, and not [Republicans],
because their kids don’t have health insurance either, and their kids
need better schools too." –Howard Dean, February 2003

"We have working white families in the South voting for tax cuts for
the richest one percent while their children remain with no health
care…The dividing of working people by race has been a
cornerstone of Republican politics for the last three decades. For my
fellow Democratic opponents to sink to this level is really tragic. The
only way we’re going to beat George Bush is if Southern white working
families and African-American working families come together under the
Democratic tent, as they did under FDR." –Howard Dean, November 2003.

Dean was roundly thrashed for these comments in the 2004 election cycle by Democrats including Joe Lieberman, who worried (ironically, as time has proved) about Dean’s "reckless" use of a "divisive" symbol, as well as by Dick Gephardt, who offered this mealy-mouthed, erroneous response:

"I don’t want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in
their pickup trucks. I will win the Democratic nomination because I
will be the candidate for the guys with American flags in their pickup
trucks."

There are a number of reasons why the recent photo above, courtesy of Lisa Bocook via Al Giordano’s The Field, heartens me in these dark times.  At least one of those reasons is its vindication of Howard Dean’s belief that by explicitly rallying Americans against the devastating class warfare waged by the Republican Party through regressive taxation, a slash-and-burn approach to government programs, and a celebration of greed, the Democratic Party could overcome the successful, race-baiting tradition of Goldwater and Reagan, broaden its base, and win elections.

That the candidate who may finally bring Dean’s political strategy to fruition five years and an election cycle later is not the white Dean, but rather Obama, a target of incessant, race-based attacks, does credit to the strategy, as well as to the candidate with the political talents to implement it.