Campaign Trailing

Fox News reported yesterday: Dean Machine Tries to Work Out Kinks.

Howard Dean needs to win at least one primary in the next two weeks to keep from becoming political toast, political experts said Thursday. The former Vermont governor is trying to get his floundering campaign back on track after twin losses in Iowa and New Hampshire -- races he was expected to win handily only a few weeks ago. [...]

Dean named longtime Al Gore associate Roy Neel as his new campaign CEO on Wednesday and veteran campaign manager Joe Trippi resigned.

Capitalism Magazine features a good Larry Elder op-ed (along with a collection of our Dean cartoons): When Did The Howard Dean Meltdown Really Begin?

Only a little over one month ago, national polls gave Dean a commanding 20 percentage-point lead over his closest Democratic rival, yet he staggered to a third-place finish in Iowa. Talk about a meltdown. If Dean continues to under-perform, his campaign ends, and the blame game begins. Expect his supporters to say the overreaction of the media and the pundits to Dean's, uh, rallying cry, brought him down.

Really? Maybe it began when Dean, on National Public Radio, mentioned a "theory" that President George W. Bush possessed prior knowledge of 9/11, yet took no steps to halt it. Two days later, he said that no, he didn't believe the theory. And a couple of days later, he called the theory "crazy."

Or maybe the meltdown began when Dean called himself an anti-war candidate, yet supported a resolution called Biden-Lugar, which authorized military action in Iraq without the need for the president to seek another resolution. Or maybe...

Posted by Forkum at January 30, 2004 05:49 AM