Howard Dean for president

He loses. Probably worse than Kerry. Worst case senerio yelling incident or something similar happens after nomintion and he actually manages to give Bush coattails to help out in congress.
 
He loses. Probably worse than Kerry. Worst case senerio yelling incident or something similar happens after nomintion and he actually manages to give Bush coattails to help out in congress.
Yes, I would agree with that. Although Dean would have been a better campaigner that Kerry, the Rove attack machine would have had a field day. When it looked likely that Dean would be the dem candidate romours said he would pick former General Wesley Clark, or Former Florida Governor Bob Graham as his running mate.
If you swing the six closest states that Kerry won over Bush, (none with a winning margin over 4.16%), Bush wins a semi-landslide victory in the electoral college 355 to 183.
 
The shouting incident didn't cost him the election. It was the fact that, right before the shouting incident, he got his butt handed to him in the Iowa caucuses. Anything he did, anything at all that could have been plausible grounds for mockery, was going to get mocked relentlessly by the media.
 
I get the impression that Kerry's uncertainty, especially about the war, damaging him.

Maybe a clearer message would have meant that Dean would have done better, and a rather slight swing would have shifted the election to him.
 
The shouting was after Dean had lost Iowa. I liked Dean and in someways he laid the groundwork for Obama in 2008, but against the Rove attack machine he would have bean beaten, not in a landslide but a semi-landslide.
 
Perhaps a defeat by a perceived-as-liberal candidate (given that Dean's actual record as Governor was quite moderate) shifts the Democrats back into DLC mode, or perhaps—as with Goldwater in '64—it seriously gets their base going and (setting aside '06/'08) move the Party faster than OTL into a more ideological positioning.
 

burmafrd

Banned
No one wins the Presidency by going too far to the extremes. Mondale, Dukakis, and to a lesser extent Dole, Kerry and Gore all did that and lost.
Reagan was an exception to the rule. Dean does not have the temperment to withstand a long campaign. What happened in Iowa would have happened sooner or later no matter what.
 
I get the impression that Kerry's uncertainty, especially about the war, damaging him.

Maybe a clearer message would have meant that Dean would have done better, and a rather slight swing would have shifted the election to him.

I agree but let us also remember that the war was still popular back then.
 

burmafrd

Banned
As my aunt once said " If I had balls I would be your uncle".
Howard dean had about as much chance as Jesse Jackson does now.
NONE.
 
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