Howard Dean Needs to Broaden His Perspective

Posted on July 3, 2003 in Campaign 2004

There’s a good point being made at Wampum about the way Howard Dean talks to America:

Although I have my issues with Dr. Dean, I initially found the speech to be rather inspiring. Then I came across this line:

He [referring to Bush] divides us by race by using the word quota, which appeals to the worst in us by instilling fear that people of color might take our jobs or our places in the nation’s best universities.

Take whose jobs and whose places? I know it’s Vermont, but were there no people of color in Dean’s intended audience?

White man that I am, I can see that Dean is engaging in Utnespeak: talk to white Americans, reassure them that by joining the Democratic Party rainbow they’re going to gain more than they will by continuing to support the Bush oligarchy. It’s the kind of talk that appeals to those white people who live within a hundred or so miles of the Canadian border, the ones who compost and recycle, but sometimes vote Republican. People like the ones in Fargo.

But what about the rest of the people? What about the African Americans, the Native Americans, the Latinos who are getting their jobs, their places at the university taken away? What about the rise in violence against women of all colors in this country? Dean’s focus on white people may seem necessary to get them to open their pocketbooks to finance his campaigns — not only against Bush but also against the DLC juggernaut — but in the long run, he’s going to have to energize more than just college students and vegetarians to vote for him. He’s going to have to get the people who have been hit hardest by the policies of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years out to vote, too. And he’s got to watch what he says to do this.

I don’t think Dr. Dean means to represent just white people. But Utnespeakers often forget that there’s more to the world than the farms of Minnesota. A winning platform will be crafted to win the hearts and minds of all the potential Democratic constituency.

A winning candidate (in the most complete sense) will undo the foreign policy and economic mess that Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush left for us.

I hope he will rethink his views on capital punishment, too.