The Anger Candidate

I’ve been watching the press try to get a handle on Howard Dean. They seem to have decided he’s the “Anger Candidate.” This is probably one of the more annoying parts of press coverage of politics—candidates are boiled down to one or two adjectives that color everything else they do. So Dean gets to be angry.

Howard Dean was angry. Ropy veins popped out of his neck, blood rushed to his cheeks, and his eyes, normally blue-gray, flashed black, all dilated pupils.

“If you ain’t the grandaddy of all liars,” he said, his left fist punching the air. “The little critters of nature: They don’t know that they’re ugly!”
“YEAH!” the crowd cheered, standing and applauding.
“That’s very funny, a fly marrying a bumblebee! I told you I’d shoot, ” Dean continued, reddening to his gray temples, “but you didn’t believe me! Why didn’t you believe me?!”

OK, Dean didn’t really say that. What was he saying that made him so angry?

That’s the question, isn’t it? Press has labled this man the “anger candidate” without analyzing whether or not he has something to be, well, angry about.

Dissolution of civil rights? Abandonment of the social contract? Abuse of government power for the enrichment of the already rich? An opaque presidency that justifies its Imperialistic agenda on a dishonest, ever-shifting array of arguments with little grounding in reality? Bush going to Africa saying God killed millions of African slaves in order to “awaken the concience of the American people”?

Dude, that makes me mad. If Dean’s pupils are dialated, they have reason to be.

But the press wants to know if that anger is enough to carry the candidate. Well, maybe:

Want to know why I’m not in Kerry’s camp? Kerry doesn’t seem angry. A lot of the other Democrats—Kerry, Lieberman, Gephardt—they all seem to me to be sleepwalking through this. Dean’s been fighting hard enough that he went from “sideshow protest candidate” to serious contender in one quarter.

Think about this, too: Dean raised more money than any other Democrat last quarter. And he did it with the lowest average donation. That means he’s raising small amounts of money from large numbers of people. I’d say the base is there.

It’s also interesting to note that—despite the Press’s assertations to the contrary—Dean has much more in common with McCain than his online fundraising efforts. Indeed, I know a former McCain supporter now enthusiasically campaigning for Dean. In fact, Dean represents exactly the kind of politician described in The Emerging Democratic Majority.

Is Dean electable? Well, we shall see. Last time the press focused enough on Gore’s “lies” (they weren’t) and “stiffness” (fair cop) instead of his political positions to cost him quite a few votes, I’m sure. If writers of the SCLM like Evelyn Nieves continue to paint him like a Francis Bacon painting, most people may turn him off before they hear what he says.

But my sense is Dean fits the mood of a significant segment of the nation—not the extreme left of the Democratic party, which has already disowned him.