233 Dean's lasting influence on the Democrats

Although Howard Dean has withdrawn from the race, an editorial in the Wall Street on February 19 notes that his influence on the other candidates has been huge. He erased all the moderate gains the Democrats had made under Bill Clinton and has pulled the party further to the left.

“On the war on terror, he has almost single-handedly pulled his party to the antiwar left. As he often said on the stump, his main competitors all voted for the Iraq war. But as Mr. Dean climbed in the polls by denouncing the war, he made opposition to it a party litmus test. Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, who had voted for the war in late 2002, opposed the $87 billion to finish the job a year later. The candidates who stayed honorably hawkish--Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman--went down to defeat.

Mr. Dean was the first candidate to call for repealing all of the Bush tax cuts. Soon every Democrat was for raising taxes in some substantial way. Senators Edwards and Kerry now assail the Patriot Act they voted for, again following Mr. Dean. They also attack the education reform they voted for, in another Dean echo. Imitation is the sincerest form of politics.”

Two days ago, I heard one commentator say that if all the Dean supporters threw their support to Edwards, they would defeat Kerry. I don’t see such a move afoot at this time, do you?

However, Scrappleface had an interesting comment for Democrats to consider: "When you look at the two top vote getters -- Kerry and Edwards -- the question becomes 'who would you rather look at for the next eight months, or eight years?'" said an unnamed Democrat strategist. "On the issues, the candidates are mirror images of each other. But the more voters take a good look at John Kerry, the better John Edwards appears."

Victor Davis Hanson, as always cool and calm and incredibly in touch with history, commented on Feb. 20 :

“There were a number of legitimate areas of debate for the fall campaign — deficits, unfunded security measures at home, moral scrutiny over postwar contracts, more help for Afghanistan, greater control of domestic entitlements, unworkable immigration proposals, and the like. But instead of statesmanship from the opposition, we got slander about Mr. Bush's National Guard service, misrepresentations about intelligence failures that had hampered both previous administrations and the present congress, preference for an unsupportable European position over our own, and stupidity about what to do in Iraq.