It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of
a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into
privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing
algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the
planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times. Who Thinks Howard Dean is Too Liberal?...and who thinks Howard Dean is About Right? The following are results from a Washington Post poll taken December 18-20, 2003 with a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points:
What these results say to me is that, first of all, the core of the voters who will vote for Dean, namely Democrats, think he's about right, neither too liberal nor too conservative. For independents, who might vote for Dean and might not, the most common response is to say that Dean is about right for them. A significant number don't know or don't have an opinion, which means that the Dean campaign will need to target its message to independents in the months to come. If Dean can bring Democrats and Independents together, he'll probably be able to win the 2004 election. So who are these people out there reflecting the media notion that Dean is just too liberal? Well, gee, they're Republicans, who are not going to vote for Dean anyway, and who the Dean campaign does not need to sway to win election. As my friends in high school used to say, whoop dee doo. ![]() ![]() ![]() |