David Brooks Connects The French And The Democrats

David Brooks, explaining the inability of the Dem establishment to Stop Dean:

... Howard Dean has launched a comprehensive assault on his party's leaders. First, he attacked their character, charging that they didn't have the guts to stand up to George Bush. Then, he attacked their power base, building an alternative fund-raising and voter mobilization structure. Now he is attacking their ideas, dismissing the Clinton era as a period of mere damage control.

So how are the Democratic leaders defending themselves? They are responding as any establishment responds when it has lost confidence in itself, when it has lost faith in its ideas, when it has lost the will to fight.

And his Big Finish:

...in the Democratic race, the Dean campaign has all the loathing and the passion.

It is a loathing not only for Bush but also for the Democratic establishment, and contempt for its weakness. Nothing has so vindicated the Dean campaign as the Democratic establishment's pallid response to it.

Oww!

Comments

[sym]

Personally, I think refraining from push polls about Dean's non-white (non-Christian, in Dean's case) children in South Carolina reflects well on the Dem establishment. It really didn't take much for the Bush campaign to start race-baiting against McCain. Bush certainly did not respond to McCain's insurgency by attacking McCain's ideas.

[Brad DeLong]

It *would* be nice if more people talked about the moral character of the Bush campaign against McCain, wouldn't it.

[Exguru]

Bob Novak probably has it right about the Democrats this time. He says the brightest among them are resigned to a Dean candidacy and a big loss, and will not support a "stop Dean" movement because it is not worth splitting the party in what is a lost cause, regardless. They feel they should give lip service to Dean this time, for party unity next time. Everybody knows Dean will go down in flames.