Dean for 2004

Interestingly, my favorite cowboy on the web, Cowboy Kahlil, is in the middle of his postings on why he’s endorsing Dean. Go check the Cowboy out; he’s got way more stuff than me.

I wasn’t planning on endorsing a Democratic candidate, But the more I found out about the candidates, the more I leaned towards Dean.

A couple of things made a big impact. First was this article written by the DLC top dogs. What a gift of clarity. Thank you, guys, for writing this. And no thanks, no DLC candidate for me, that’s for sure.

The second big moment of clarity has to do with this huge monster bill, NCLB.A quick summary of where the candidates stand on NCLB is here. Of all the candidates, only Dean gets it.

Unfortunately, Clark simply doesn’t have much in the domestic policy area yet. I’m not convinced Kucinich gets NCLB, although to his credit, he does support other wonderful child related things. I’d love to see other candidates get with the program.

Given that the individuals in the current regime have revealed themselves to be quite untrustworthy and most definitely sociopathic, I wanted a candidate with the strongest and most well-organized campaign. The opponents play dirty. It’s going to be ugly and awful. It just seemed as though the Dean people kept doing the right things: keeping connected with its ever growing base, listening to them, and doing the right footwork, as well as keeping connected with the internet support, the blogs.

There were other intangibles about Dean and his campaign that added up. Dean struck me as the guy who didn’t talk like a Beltway politician, at least not yet. He’s not the polished speaker like Edwards. Funny how this translates into a positive but all those ‘gaffes’ the pundits and the media went crazy about just didn’t register as strongly with me. He’s not silver tongued, that’s for sure, and that’s refreshing. I’m differentiating this quality from our current leader in the White House, who actually talks as though he’s dyslexic (by misusing the endings of words, he essentially makes up new words).

Dean ain’t perfect. He’s surprisingly more conservative than I am. But, Dean it is. After signing up for the Dean campaign, I was pleasantly shocked to receive an email from the campaign, addressed by Joe Trippi himself, with a welcome and instructions on how to be more actively involved. This was followed by the email from the local area coordinator of events so I can immediately get involved. Wow. No buyer's remorse yet.