An ode to Howard

i read this by georgia10 at daily kos...

I'm discouraged. Scratch that. I'm heartbroken. It pains me to watch our nation legalize torture with Democrats (so far) offering nothing more than a shrug. Sure, there's grumbling on the left over the torture bill, but can Democrats stop it? Will they even try? I'm not holding breath.

We've been down this road too many times.

then i read this, and now i'm even more discouraged...

Howard Dean preached a different kind of populism: the empowerment of the American Citizenry. The war cries of "YOU HAVE THE POWER" and "I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK" resonated with people across the political spectrum.

In Howard Dean's America, the National Parks were your parks and mine. Our taxes bought them, our taxes maintained them. The trees on National Lands were our trees, yours and mine. And when some company came onto our land and chopped down our trees and sent the timber to Japan for their own profit, that was theft.

Those kids in the public schools, those were your kids and my kids, and it was our duty to educate them all. Even if we didn't have kids. The hospitals were our hospitals. The roads were our roads. The military, those were our kids and our parents and our brothers and our sisters, even if we didn't know anyone in the services, and their sacrifices were made on our behalf.

He never had to say the words. In fact, I'm not sure he ever did. The important thing was that he wanted to give America back to Americans. And he wanted us to know that we were all in it together.

Solidarity and empowerment. These are very dangerous concepts.

When you empower the people, the power comes from somewhere, and where it comes from is the powerful.

If a politician was no longer answerable to the guys giving the million dollar checks but was, instead, answerable to the millions of people who gave $20, what power could the lobbyists bring? And where would those perks go? Who would take those politicians on trips and golf games? Who would be sitting at the table sipping $400 glasses of wine? The great unwashed hordes on the internet? The college kids with scruffy beards and blue jeans? No. It was too much to ask.

Howard Dean had to be taken down. And taken down he was. But Howard Dean knew ... that the only way to take back our nation was door-by-door, block-by-block, American-by-American.

i've never felt so politically crushed as when dean got squashed like a bug by the massive political/media machine...

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