Legal Commentary

Dean's Fumbles On The Popular Vote and MI/FL

By Big Tent Democrat

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

I watched Howard Dean's appearance on CBS's Face The Nation. He did a fine job I thought. Then I saw his appearance on ABC's This Week. He blew it there.

First and foremost, Dean decided to comment on the importance of the popular votes. After saying "we must listen to the voters," Howard Dean then decided to mash up this point by dismissing the importance of the popular vote. Interestingly, I do not think Dean meant to do that. I think he meant to say this is a delegate race (and Dean NEVER treated the pledged delegate count as particularly meaningful). Dean wants the delegates to decide, as they will. But the Super Delegates can, should, and I believe, WILL look at the popular vote as an important, maybe even decisive, factor. I do not think Howard Dean has any objection to that. More . . .

Dean also fumbled the FL/MI issue. He is certainly in a tough spot. He spoke very favorably for revotes in FL/MI previous to Obama's blocking them. At this point, Dean must remain neutral on the revote issue. But his discussion of the FL/MI issue was extremely poor and frankly, inaccurate. I do not know what happened to him on ABC, but it was not consistent with his appearance on Face the Nation.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 06, 2008 (boomark / email).