about changing America

* Unelectable, My Ass!: Arianna Huffington on Howard Dean:

an excerpt:

"Like Kennedy, Dean's campaign was initially fueled by his anti-war outrage. Like Kennedy, Dean has found himself fighting not just to represent the Democratic Party but to remake it. Like Kennedy, Dean is offering an alternative moral vision for America, not just an alternative political platform.

"And like Kennedy, Dean has come under withering attack from his critics for the very attributes that his supporters find most attractive.

"'He could be intemperate and impulsive... the image of wrath – his forefinger pointing, his fist pounding his palm, his eyes ablaze.' Sean Hannity on Howard Dean? No, Theodore White on Bobby Kennedy in 'The Making of the President 1968.'


"It's the same ludicrous charge of being 'too angry' that's being constantly leveled at Dean. Have his Democratic opponents (and the notoriously decorous Washington press corps) suddenly morphed into Miss Manners? Personally, I could never trust a man who does not occasionally get hot under the collar.

"Of course Dean is angry. Take a look at what's happening in Iraq, where another 236 American soldiers have been killed or wounded since Saddam was dragged out of his spider hole. And take a look closer to home, where we have 12 million children living in poverty, six out of seven working poor families unable to afford quality child care, record levels of personal debt, and more and more U.S. jobs being 'outsourced' overseas.

"If you still have a pulse (are you listening, Joe Lieberman?) you should be royally pissed.

"'I have traveled and I have listened to the young people of our nation," Kennedy said during his announcement speech, "and felt their anger about the war that they are sent to fight and about the world they are about to inherit.'"