New "Dean" Needed
By Jeff Horwitz
Contributing Writer

The last few years have not been good for either the Democratic Party or for America. Recently, it's become commonplace in the liberal media to look back at the final years of the Clinton Administration and marvel at the perverse sort of "innocence" that could make us believe that misbehavior with a White House intern was a serious issue facing our nation.

Beginning with September 11, but by no means ending with it, America has seen many of its most trusted institutions fail. We thought a vastly powerful military made us safe; it was and still is unable to protect against terrorism. We thought our "free market" made us strong; the successive corporate scandals of the last year have proven otherwise. Some of us were even naive enough to think that the Democratic Party would nominate candidates that would stand up to the gross mismanagement of the American government.

We were wrong, and now we've got to take our country back. But first that requires taking back the Democratic Party, and that's going to take 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean.

Who is he? Well, he's a medical doctor, the longest-serving governor in Vermont's history, and the strongest Democratic candidate for president in 2004.

Most voters have never heard of him, but that's starting to change. At the California Democratic convention, the audience gave him a standing ovation. In New Hampshire, the first primary state, he's tied with John Kerry for first place in the polls. And across the nation, unpaid local organizers are already going to work for him-eighteen months before the general election.

Some of us are already at work on the Claremont Colleges. We support Howard Dean because, during his eleven years as Governor of Vermont, he balanced his state's budget, passed laws providing health care for nearly every child in the state, set aside hundreds of thousands of acres of land for conservation, and made school funding more equitable. We want Howard Dean to do for America what he did for Vermont.

We support Dean because he was principled and brave enough to make Vermont the first state in the country to legalize civil union for same-sex partners-Dean passed the law in an election year, when opinion polls were running against civil union by a 70-30 margin.

Furthermore, not only did Howard Dean legalize civil union, he convinced the people of his state that it was the right thing to do: Dean won the election, and now a majority of Vermonters support civil union.

Finally, we support Dean because, unlike several other Democratic presidential frontrunners, he has loudly opposed the war against Iraq from the start.

If you support Dean's stance on these issues too, you're in the majority. Dean is not only the best presidential candidate, he's also the one who has the best shot at winning. The reason the current administration has gotten away with its agenda for so long is not because Americans are ignorant, apathetic, or right-wing by nature, but because no one has been asking the right questions. CNN hasn't asked the people it polls if having Sadaam dead would make them feel safer than having full health coverage for themselves and their loved ones; Fox News hasn't asked if cutting taxes for the rich is worth cutting nutrition, veteran, and education programs. But Howard Dean has, and the answers aren't surprising.

If we're going to defeat Bush and his projected $250 million dollars in campaign funds in the next election, we've got to get started early. We've already learned this the hard way: only a few months ago, everyone in the anti-war movement (including myself) was patting each other on the backs for having been so foresightful as to have begun protesting a war that hadn't even yet begun.

Unfortunately, everyone who went to the protests in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles was already too late. Our best chance to stop the war in Iraq war was lost in November of 2000. Our second best chance to stop it expired with the congressional midterms last year.

We'll have another chance in 2004. Let's not make the same mistake again. Dean for America in 2004.