Dean is the most interesting of all the candidates including Bush. The Republicans want him so badly they are contributing to his campaign. The establishment Democrats have seemed to want him to go away since he showed them up and became the front runner. The guy is running a campaign that is confounding people...he's got people pissed off and worked up all over the place and for different reasons.
In the Iowa debate (yeah, I actually watched it) Lieberman, Gephardt, and Kerry attacked him viciously...Dean looked tired and did not respond with the sort of fire we're used to...he actually moved to try to create some sort of unity between the candidates and his message was quite toned down. I had two thoughts on that...either he was just exhausted (he looked it) or his advisors have told him to cool off a bit...I lean toward the second idea because it seemed to encompass his whole message that night.
In the end this caused him to blend in more with the other candidates (for the record they all looked exhausted except for Kucinich, Braun, and Edwards) ...I thought this time around Edwards came off the best along with Kucinich. The thing was though what seemed to drive Lieberman, Gephardt, and Kerry was the desire to destroy Dean. Lieberman fired the worst shots and the other two did their best as well. It made the whole ordeal sort of pathetic but I sort of envisioned Lieberman's assassination attempt to have been useful fodder for later attacks by Republicans.
Dean is coming across as an "outsider" and I think for certain people that aspect of him is important. The attacks on him are really playing this up and even warping my perspective of things. I mean I end up rooting for the guy because all these insiders keep bashing the hell out of him. I'm not sure if he's the best candidate but it sure intrigues me that the Republicans have a love affair with the guy...I've heard him called "the most radical Democrat we've ever seen in the history of this country" by a conservative talk show host...and the establishment Democrats sort of fear him and think he's dangerous.
He is the only guy out there that creates such weirdness and he is the guy that's keeping it interesting right now. Can he beat Bush? I don't know but this is going to be a weird year for Bushco...there's a lot of information about their activities that will be hitting the streets by the spring and this Ashcroft removing himself deal can't be a good thing for Bushco. Iraq remains a powder keg and who knows what may happen there...I just think 2004 is gonna be one weird ride.
