Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Dang it Howie! You're not supposed to implode until after you're nominated!

Explode either. From Disaster for Dean in Iowa:
Dean's collapse, combined with the combined surge of Sen. Kerry (Mass.) and Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), who finished second, threw the race wide open.

It also raised fresh questions about Dean's temperament when he launched into a screaming, clenched-teeth rant before his supporters after the vote count.
...
Rolling up his shirt sleeves and shrieking so loud that his voice cracked, a raging Dean rallied his supporters with forced optimism and a pugilistic tone that stood in contrast to the formal upbeat speeches by his opponents.

"I'll see you around the corner, around the block," Dean said, sounding like a bully taunting Kerry and Edwards, whom he'll face in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday.

"He's crazy," said Republican pollster Frank Luntz after watching Dean's bizarre performance. "This is everything that voters don't want to hear from him. He's just lost the Democratic nomination for president. He's too hot."

Dean told his supporters, "We will not give up. We will not quit, now or ever. We have just begun to fight. We have just begun to fight."
I saw this on the tube and thought Deano was going to have a coronary! Drudge is all over it ('Dean goes nuts") and has an audio clip. Tim Blair is having a Planet Deano contest - ("Go nuts Dean-style in your own country").

And speaking of the tube, I watched a couple minutes of the two caucuses that CSPAN televised (on two different channels) and ran screaming from the room. More entertaining was the Free Republic live thread on the caucuses which featured a variety of snarky comments on what CSPAN was providing. Highlights included the pony-tailed yutz passing around the paper bag for "Dollars for Democrats" and the inability of the characters at the other caucus to properly add up the votes.

Aside from the failure of Deano's vaunted Internet organization to deliver the goods, I think the other big story was the failure of the labor union muscle of both Gephardt and Deano. See Lowell Ponte's Dis-Union in Iowa.

However, there's a long row to hoe before the Donks finally nominate someone and it's looks like plenty of good amusement is in store. I can hardly wait!

Speaking of which, can someone explain this? Girls gone wild?