A reader sends an email at 7:29, commenting on the first post of the day, but it seems to fit even better on the post I put up at 7:33.

There are thematic convergences today, and I'll celebrate the phenomenon by making this a new post.

Here's what George just sent me, a propos of the mention of Howard Dean in the first post of the day, and with no awareness that I was working on a post about the monetization of the legalization of cannabis:

Former Gov. and physician Dean sits on the board of Tilray, a publicly traded company affiliated with Anheuser-Busch that bills itself as a "global cannabis-lifestyle and consumer packaged goods company" that sells alcoholic beverages and hemp-based foods, i.e. dope itself in the form of mints, chocolates, etc. (Vodka, by the same way of thinking, would be a 'grain-based beverage.') 

So, here is a family medicine practitioner selling booze and pot, which is far, far, far, stronger than anything he may have used as a teenager and causes scromiting, the mysterious new condition that causes screaming and vomiting in a third of dope users, according to a 2015 (!) study reported in Health.com. 

“Then it became pretty obvious that poor kids of color with bad educations, they already had three strikes against them and the fourth was having a joint,” said [family medicine doctor] Dean [in 2019]. “Which after all is probably not as bad as alcohol.”

"CPAC did two straw polls: One with former President Donald Trump included and one without him."

"In the first, Trump crushed with 70%, which, if you've followed politics over the past, say, five years, will not surprise you. DeSantis came in second with 21%, the ONLY candidate not named Trump who got more than 1% in the straw poll. In the second straw poll -- without Trump -- DeSantis took 68%(!) of the vote. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came in second with 5% followed by Donald Trump Jr. and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 4% and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem at 3%."

From "The leader of the Republican Party *not* named Donald Trump" from Chris Cillizza (CNN). 

Meanwhile, about that "Don't Fauci My Florida" campaign merchandise — which we talked about yesterday — there's "Ron DeSantis' Anti-Fauci Florida Merchandise Prompts Outrage: 'This Is Madness'" (from Newsweek): 

The [former] governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, was among those to criticize his Florida counterpart over the sale of such items. He tweeted: "DeSantis is a well educated crackpot with no allegiance to our country, his constituency or the truth."...

MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid was similarly scathing, sharing a link to The Washington Post's report on the merchandise alongside the quip: "Siri: show me an ignorant ghoul..."

They really are helping him sell more merchandise.

"7:40 AM Sen. Durbin says it’s time for Iowa caucuses to end/7:35 AM Howard Dean says Iowa shouldn’t be first caucus anymore..."

I'm reading headlines at the Washington Post.

You see what they are doing? They're blaming Iowa. It's not the fault of the Democratic Party. It's Iowa's fault. After the citizens of Iowa put up with all that interaction with candidates swarming the state for the past year (and more) and after they showed up for this elaborate nighttime gathering in groups in gyms and showing support with their bodies, they are blamed for the screwup of the party!

The other blame-shifting I'm seeing is: The computers did it. There was an app and it somehow caused all the trouble. Reminiscent of Hillary's wipe-it-with-a-cloth computer problems. I really don't want to hear excuses that have to do with computers getting things wrong. This cannot have been a complicated app, and the backup was to use the phones, yet they want to blame the phone lines too! It's just not credible.

AND: There's also room to blame the Clintons: "Tech firm started by Clinton campaign veterans is linked to Iowa caucus reporting debacle" (LA Times):

An app created by a tech firm run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign is taking heat for the unprecedented delay in reporting Democratic caucus results from Iowa. The firm behind the app reportedly is Shadow....

“When a light is shining, Shadows are a constant companion,” its website says....

"Howard Dean wonders if Donald Trump’s continuous sniffing is coke-related."

"Huh. I’m old enough to remember when the left at least paid lip service to hating McCarthy-esque smear campaigns...." blogs Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.

Well, Dean was only asking. It was pretty hard not to be distracted by the sniffling. I thought Hillary was the one who was supposed to be sick, and here's Trump with — what? — a cold. He was mostly sniffling at the beginning. I was exclaiming "He keeps sniffing!" And he had that new vertical-index-finger gesture — you know, the upper lip windshield wiper move? Since I was on alert to see if Hillary had what it takes physically, I was riveted by Trump's nose.

ADDED: Trump said: "No sniffles. No. You know, the mic was very bad, but maybe it was good enough to hear breathing, but there was no sniffles." If you heard sniffles, you're wrong or the microphone was wrong.

2 old men yelling at us — it's the pop style of our time.

Over at Facebook, my son John Althouse Cohen writes:

I remember when I first saw a minute of one of Jeb Bush's speeches last year, before any of the debates, I instantly sensed that he didn't have what it takes. He stumbled over practically every sentence as if he were reading the text for the first time. I instinctively turned off the speech — it isn't fun to watch someone who seems uncomfortable and forced.

There's a reason Obama, as a candidate in 2008, got so much acclaim for his soaring speeches. No matter what you think of Obama, you can't deny the political reality that his oratorical talents mattered.

I comment:

I remember blogging the '04 convention, complaining about all the speakers, and then, when it was Obama, saying something like: Now, this is a guy I can listen to. It's funny that it's so hard to find anyone in politics that we enjoy listening to. Right now, oddly, people are enjoying listening to Trump and Sanders... old men yelling at us. It's not soaring oratory, but it's all we've got. I'm thinking we, the culture, has some responsibility for this. It's the pop style of the time.

Here's the old post of mine, from July 27, 2004:

Now here is a speaker I can stand to listen to. He's modulating his voice and he seems to have the speech memorized, so he doesn't have that awful teleprompter stare. He places some emphasis on personal responsibility.... Obama does a great job delivering the speech, even though the words of the speech are quite banal. There are many references to hope. The speech is blessedly short.

A new pop style was emerging, the one that's been superseded by angry-old-guy-yelling. I click back to see who spoke before Obama at the DNC in '04. What was the dying-out old style then?

Daschle and Mosely Braun... Mosely Braun stressed out her voice and hurt my poor ears. Can't they turn up the sound levels and coach the speakers to speak to the people watching at home in their living rooms? This speaking to the huge auditorium is quite likely to get Kerry in trouble later this week, as his manner of speaking is insufferable when he's projecting into a large room. And we all know that speaking (and screaming) to a large, noisy crowd was fatal to Dean's candidacy....

And 12 years later we seem to have a taste once again for looking on as the loud voice stirs the crowd. It's nothing you want in your living room in person, but you like the thrill, vicariously, from a distance... like a teenager lying on the carpet, listening to heavy metal through headphones.

Seriously, what science questions should we want our political candidates to answer?

Last night, we were talking about David Harsanyi's interesting push back to those who performed a freakout on the occasion of Scott Walker's "punting" when he was asked if he feels "comfortable" with evolution. Harsanyi's angle was the familiar conservative rhetoric of flipping: What if the media went after liberals in the same way they go after conservatives? The idea is that the reporter who queried Walker was looking to expose some ignorance, stupidity, or rigidity that could be used against him, and the media is loaded with reporters who are itching to be to him what Katie Couric was to Sarah Palin.

Everybody's trying to be his Katie, everybody's trying to be his Katie, everybody's trying to be his Katie, now.

Harsanyi's questions include ones about abortion, like: "Is a 20-week-old unborn child a human being?" To my mind, that isn't even a science question, it's a moral question, and it's a moral question that you can't get started on withou defining the term "human being." It's also, obviously, a stand-in for another question that isn't at all hidden: Is the killing of a 20-week-old fetus permissible? I say, if we want to claim to be asking science questions, frame the questions in science terms: Is a 20-week-old fetus capable of any conscious perception?

By the way, the evolution question asked of Scott Walker was not put in scientific terms. It was: "Are you comfortable with the idea of evolution? Do you believe in it? Do you accept it?" Walker's comfort with an idea is a separate matter from his understanding of the subject at the scientific level? Are you comfortable with the idea that cancerous tumors grow in the bodies of children? And, please, click on that link and watch the video of the British journalist asking that question. What a supercilious, obnoxious twit! Walker keeps his cool as the guy is trying to aggravate him. Walker said it was an inappropriate question: "That’s a question that a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or another."

Clearly, there are some evolution-related questions that a political candidate should be expected to answer. I'd ask: Do you think that public school science classes should teach the theory of evolution without also covering other theories of the origin of species such as creationism and intelligent design? What, if anything, would you do to support religious parents who believe that to teach evolution to their children is to teach that their religion is not true? Does your answer reflect your understanding of the meaning of the Establishment Clause, or would you say the same thing even if there were no Establishment Clause? To what extent would you support a school voucher system to enable religious parents to send their children to a parochial school where they could be taught that their parents' religion is true? Would you require private religious schools to teach evolution in science classes and not to present the alternative, religious theories in that class?

But I don't consider those questions to be science questions! Those are legal questions combined with educational policy questions. I think my questions would show us a lot about how intelligent and thoughtful the candidate is, how much grounding he has in American constitutional values, and which way he leans on policy questions.

What are the science questions here? Would you ask the candidate to explain the theory of evolution? Harsanyi suggests "What is evolution?" as an alternative to the "inane" question "do you believe in evolution"? I think any decent candidate would and should punt on an invitation to launch into an impromptu science-teacher mini-lecture. That's not going to come out right. Here's my evolution-specific science question: Have you studied the theory of evolution at the college level?

I like that question in part because some Walker antagonists are linking his failure to talk about evolution to his lack of a college degree. For example, Howard Dean said:

"I think there are going to be a lot of people who worry about [Scott Walker's lack of a college degree].... I worry about people being President of the United States not knowing much about the world and not knowing much about science... [E]volution is a widely accepted scientific construct and people who don't believe in evolution either do it for hard-right religious reasons or because they don't know anything."

Scott Walker had 3 years of college. Hillary Clinton had 4 (plus law school). Both Walker and Clinton majored in political science. Did they take any non-social-science science courses? Walker has had plenty of political science life experience to compensate for the lack of that final year. Hillary did her senior year, closing out the requirements for her degree from Wellesley by completing her senior honors thesis in political science: "'There Is Only the Fight...': An Analysis of the Alinsky Model." Did that bring her any deeper understanding of scientific topics like evolution and fetal development and climate change?

Here's a special science question for Hillary: When you did your "Analysis of the Alinsky Model," were you engaged in a scientific study? And I have some non-scientific follow-ups: Would Alinsky have considered your study of him scientific? How would a follower of the Alinsky Model frame questions about science to be asked of politicians? Is your answer to this question the answer of someone following the Alinsky Model? If it were, would it even be possible to answer "yes"?

That last question is a science question if logic is science.

"The 12 best political rants."

And #1, of course, is... Phil Davison (the "aggressive campaigner").

ADDED: I just rewatched the "Dean Scream" (#3) and — after all these years — what I'm seeing is a failure to completely commit to the scream. He held back. That may be the opposite of what you feel you remember, but watch it. He needed to do a big manly shout, like a guy at a football game, and the hand gesture should have been a fully abandoned punch in the air. What is that he does with his hand? It's like he's doing a comic imitation of somebody else — somebody he doesn't respect — doing a punch. And the yell is kind of an old lady yell. That's why it's never called a yell but a scream.

Live-blogging Day 2 of the Democratic Convention.

5:34 Central Time: I jump in, watching C-SPAN, just in time to see the ever-bold, ever-confident Chuck Schumer stride onto the stage. He says: "Tonight, we welcome a New Yorker: President Bill Clinton as our prime time speaker." He does a little fist pump on "speaker." "It's no accident that Democrats celebrate" — a bigger fist pump — "our past Presidents, while Republicans virtually banish theirs" — biggest fist pump and a big smile.

6:40: Emanuel Cleaver gets the conventioneers fired up, but the hoarse-throated yelling doesn't play so well over the television, just like the Howard Dean scream seemed nutty outside of the room where the scream was screamed.

6:48: "Mitt Romney doesn't know a thing about hard work or responsibility," says the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, who likes to portray work as "mopping, vacuuming, and picking up our trash."

7:01: President Obama has focused on jobs since Day 1, says Nancy Pelosi. So... do we get to judge him by the result, or does he get reelection for effort?

7:07: Lots of Dems tonight are talking about "the American Dream," as, of course, the GOP did last week. It's kind of nice to see so much consensus about the idea of individuals working hard — for themselves and their families — and succeeding economically, and interesting that everyone's enthusiastic about calling that "American," as though they're into patriotism, even though I imagine it's the dream among all human beings to be able to achieve economic well-being for themselves and their families through their own work. The real question, rather obviously, is which party will do better for these American dreamers of the American dream. What is the Democrats' argument here? I really don't see it. They seem to be copying the Republicans' theme, criticizing the Republicans for saying it, and insisting they have some dream-boosting methodology.

7:15: Another parade of women. Last night's was the women of the House. Now, it's the women of the Senate. This segment was preceded by a treacly video with a song about "a woman's voice," which apparently, "can sing any song." Okay. Sing "A Boy Named Sue." Gotcha! Didn't I?

7:25: American Idol runner-up Jessica Sanchez sings "You're all I need to get by...." And then a video of Barack Obama comes on.

7:28: A young woman promotes Planned Parenthood, where she found a nurse who was able to diagnose her endometriosis, after a whole lot of doctors had no idea what was wrong with her and even accused her of being some sort of drama queen. What the hell kind of crap doctors was she going to? Come on. Endometriosis is a standard ailment. Are we to think misogyny prevents its detection? (I can't be fact checking, but, seriously, who were these doctors who couldn't diagnose endometriosis?)

7:32: The president of Planned Parenthood asserts that "Mitt Romney says he'll get rid of Planned Parenthood." Can I get a fact check? I just don't believe that.

9:16: Sorry I haven't updated in a while, but I've been bored to tears. Now, it's Elizabeth Warren, so...  She's excited about going on before Bill Clinton, who "had the good sense to marry one of the coolest women on the planet."

9:20: "The system is rigged," Elizabeth Warren asserts.

9:36: I found Warren pretty boring. When the crowd chanted "Warren, Warren," it sounded like "boring, boring." What was boring was mainly what was boring about so many of the other speeches. So much talk about economic opportunity, with no noticeable plan for furthering it, other than statements about how other people out there — not you! — ought to pay their "fair share" of taxes, and this doctrine that you've got to build the economy from the middle out. She got fervent about the notion that corporation are not people. They don't have hearts, and they don't die, and so forth.

9:38: Bill Clinton says: "I want to nominate a man who's cool on the outside, but who burns for America on the inside."

9:58: Clinton goes on at great length on the topic of how Republicans won't cooperate and compromise and work with the Democrats. Then he says he watched the GOP convention last week:"Did y'all watch their convention? I did."

In Tampa, the Republican argument against the President's reelection was actually pretty simple, pretty snappy. It went something like this: We left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in. But they did it well. They looked good. They sounded good. 

And he says he was convinced they were "honorable people," who really believe what they said and will keep their commitments, so the key for Democrats is to make sure people understand what they believe.

10:09: Wow, he's going on a long time. It's reminiscent of his DNC keynote speech in 1988, when his going on too long turned into a huge joke. That was Clinton's original national reputation: The guy who talked too long.

10:27: It's almost 20 minutes since I said "Wow, he's going on a long time," and he's still going. This is insane. His inflections are getting wacky, like he's in love with how cute he is.

10:38: Finally, it's over. He spoke for 50 minutes. That was really self-indulgent.

11:04 (my time, after pausing): Obama comes out to interact with Clinton. Clinton gives a low bow. And now, they still have to do the roll call. I feel sorry for the kiddies in the crowd. It's late! 

"Do people really want a woman President? Do they want the Clinton circus back in town?"

"Do they want to keep trading the presidency between these two weird families?"

Joe Klein has some questions (in a big, rambling Time piece):

"Who knows?" said Karl Rhomberg, a former Scott County Democratic chairman, after watching Clinton perform in Davenport, Iowa. He pointed out that four years ago, in November, Howard Dean was inevitable, and John Kerry was over. "But 40% were undecided going into the last week of the caucus. It'll be the same this time. Hillary is 20% smarter than the guys, but a woman has to be just to pull equal. And I can't stand thinking about what Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are going to do to her. People are just sick of that. They love Obama. He's very inspiring. But in the end, Iowans vote on electability. I hate to say it, but my guess is they'll vote for the white guy — Edwards — this time, just like they voted for the war hero last time."

It was a chilling thought. I'm sure Edwards wouldn't want to win that way, and I'm not so sure he will. But Rhomberg's scenario wasn't at all implausible. It certainly raises the central issue of this Democratic campaign: whether Hillary Clinton's excellence as a candidate will be enough to overcome her family's garish political history, the undiluted hatred that will be directed against her and the demons that still haunt our nation.

Oh, that drooling over Clinton is a little repulsive. Excellence. 20% smarter. Ugh! But what's worse is pushing the offensive notion that if we don't like her, we're sexist. It's hatred. Demons! Haunting our nation!

Edwards wouldn't want to win that way. Please. First of all, Edwards wants to win any way he can. He'll even claim to be more womanly than Hillary if he thinks we want a woman.

But we've all been thinking about 2004 and Howard Dean in connection with Hillary's current seeming inevitability, haven't we? Can't you picture the scenario playing out the same way in '08? Scream and all.

ADDED: "Why is Hillary playing the gender card?" Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg diavlog.

When men "leer" at their own wives...

... at what point do we have a problem with it? Dr. Helen scoffs at at the people who complain about the way Fred Thompson looks at his voluptuous wife:

[T]here are many ... women who feel that unless one is Bill Clinton or the object of their own lecherous desires (of course, for these women, their own desire is called empowerment--not lechery!), a regular joe has no right to look at a woman--not even in pictures--with desire in his heart. In their eagar quest to control men's sexual rights, some "feminist" women (and other prudish ones too!) go to extremes to shame, expose or intimidate men who let their lust for women dare come to the surface. ...

[M]en have a right to sexual expression just as women do and leering or even an interest in porn is not a crime--but if some women have their way, it soon may be. So, I say to you men out there who believe in your right to sexual freedom, stand up for your right to leer--or it may soon be a thing of the past.

Well, now this goes beyond the problem of men leering at their own wives, and it also leans heavily on the idea of rights. If we're talking rights, surely, we've also got a right to express contempt for men who boorishly exhibit their sexual feelings in public. People need to learn manners -- even if bad manners aren't a crime. The word "leer" is useful: It lets you know there's a line you will be judged by. Learn where it is or suffer the consequences -- which don't include prison, just contempt and rejection... unless you've got a special way about you, which you probably don't if you're reading this and not off somewhere enjoying the benefits of flouting society's norms.

This connects for me to the discussion going on over in the comments to my profile at Politico, which refers to a line I crossed, not in person, but in writing, saying something that many people would think but not say looking at a picture of a woman. One commenter brings up the old line: If women knew what men were thinking, they'd never stop slapping us. I'm not a man. I don't know. But I've heard. It seems to me that you may have the right to leer, but as with many other rights, you'd better be careful how and when you choose to exercise it, if you want to get along well in life. Go ahead and cross a line -- I did -- but know what you're doing and do it for a good reason. (I did.)

But back to Fred Thompson. He's leering at his own wife. Does that make it okay? Well, there are lots of things you can do with your wife that people don't want to see in public. But what are people seeing with Fred Thompson? He doesn't stare at her breasts, does he? More likely, you're staring at her breasts, and then you're looking at him -- egad! he's older! -- and you're projecting your own feelings on to his face -- including, perhaps, the feeling that you don't want him to be President. You can still insult him. Go ahead! Just know what you're doing.

Ugly tourists.

It turns out Americans aren't the worst, but there's still a NYT article about it.

"... what distinguished Americans was that they could be loud and demanding, and then would invariably apologize and give them big tips."

"I suggest to you with respect, Your Honor, that you're a few French Fries short of a Happy Meal..."

The judge does not laugh it off.

"Why and when did you decide, f*ck that, I'm coming out swinging?"

Amba asks why, so soon after putting an asterisk in "f*ck," I did a post that consisted of calling someone a dick. Good question, and my first answer to it is inadequate, as I noticed this morning. So I reanswered, and I'm elevating the answer to a post, partly so Amba will see it but also to set up a new conversation about how we should be speaking to each other.

I make a special case out of the word "f*ck" because of filters. They can't filter "dick." It's a name. My own father's name was Dick. I have yet to meet anyone named F*ck.

But there's the question, why did I do a post like this, just calling the guy a dick? I don't usually post like that or talk like that about someone. It's like the old "nerd wants love" post. I do it occasionally, when linking to someone who's being rotten to me. (I normally just don't link to such thing[s].) A short post requires you to go over and read it. He gets traffic. He's not particularly hurt by it, actually. He has his point and you have to read it. You might think he's right. Personally, I think he's so clearly wrong that just reading his post will get you where I would otherwise have to persuade you to go.

Plus, I operate on whim and intuition here. And the guy's name is Quick. It rhymes with dick and calling him a dick is quick.

And I did just approve of John McCain saying "f*ck you" and "chickenshit." Maybe McCain emboldened me. Which might be a reason to disapprove of him. He's setting an example and, being a leader, he gets followers.

Now, I was criticized for saying "I want a President who says 'f*ck you' and calls things that are chickenshit 'chickenshit.'" Notably, Beldar wrote: 'I do not want an American president who cannot restrain himself from shouting 'F*** you!' at his peers." But I don't know that McCain couldn't restrain himself. I wasn't there. I didn't hear the context. I assume Senators say harsh things to each other behind closed doors, but I don't have a feeling for what the norm is. My approval is at the abstract level. I am not expressing an opinion about whether the things McCain called "chickenshit" really were chickenshit. And Senator Cornyn possibly didn't deserve a "f*ck you" on that occasion.

What I didn't like was that people who oppose McCain on the immigration bill chose to quote him to the press and that the press reported it. They were trying to use American sensitivity to language to shape opinion about the immigration bill. But your view of the immigration bill shouldn't depend on whether one of its supporters expresses himself in ruder language than you like. I'm sure you know that, but it was an attempt to manipulate you subliminally, and I meant to call them on it. It was also an attempt to wreck McCain's presidential candidacy, something plenty of people have a motivation to do.

I wrote my post saying "it's nothing" not because I tolerate uncontrolled anger -- though I probably accept (and engage in) more passionate expression than most people do. I wrote it because I thought I detected an underhanded political move. Who decided on this occasion to tattle on a few of the words that were spoken at a closed-door meeting? Why did they do it? You can't be naïve enough to think that it was someone who just loves a mutually respectful deliberative environment.

ADDED: And here's Amba's response to this post:

I wondered if it was McCain's influence, or just the toughening effect of the gratuitous vileness Ann's been subjected to, or even, on some level, an angry swiping-away of the stereotype of the delicate-sensibilitied female or feminist blogger. Tearing down the goddamned lace curtains....

[The blogosphere] is what we make it, and there's an interesting tension between the desire for courtesy and the dislike of bullshit. Real civilized discourse holds that tension instead of collapsing it one way or the other -- into potty-mouthed ranting or prissy political correctness of either persuasion -- and it strikes me that it has a lot to do with gender, and the homage paid each to the traditional sensibilities of the other by tough women and courteous men.

And the best medicine is.... Okay, kids, go ahead!

"Crooked, you know, lying group." Excuse me if I don't get all excited about Kerry saying , "these guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen." Of course, like the Dean scream, this is the sort of thing that everyone can get up to speed and have an opinion about instantly. It's almost impossible for me to get outraged at this, even though I deplore the overuse of the words "lie," "lying," and "liar," in political debate. But my main two problems with Kerry's current gaffe is that it shows ineptitude (in not knowing when a microphone is attached to his person) and poor speaking ability. Here he is trying get tough with the word "crooked," then he has to stop and say "you know," to collect his thoughts. He thinks (I'm guessing): do I dare say "liars"?--do I dare to eat a peach?--and then decides to tone it down by avoiding the noun and going with the adjective "lying" followed by the excessively pussyfooted "group of people." He goes all Auntie Em in the end:

For twenty-three years I've been dying to tell you what I thought of you! And now... well, being a Christian woman, I can't say it!

Aw, dammit, now I have to call Campaign Machismo Watch on myself!

Why not scream? I watched Dean's speech today. As he got toward the end, he started using that growly voice that he used in Iowa just before his fateful scream. He even ended with a big sweep of the arm that seemed like the Iowa arm move that accompanied the scream. I was kind of hoping for him to do the big scream again, just for fun and because he could have done it with impunity now. Ah well, nice concession speech anyway. It's good to go out with grace and style. I remember Al Gore giving his final concession speech in 2000, after the Supreme Court's decision. He was at his very best that day.

So how does the last stand Dean campaign look here on the ground in Wisconsin? I don't know. It's the middle of winter. I was going to go down to the Library Mall (an outdoor square on campus) and see what sort of campaign efforts were being made, but I changed my mind and got in my car to drive somewhere for a late lunch, then headed home to get some reading done. I don't see how you can campaign very well in Wisconsin in the winter--or even get people to show up at the polls properly.

Dean showed up in person last night and spoke downtown at a theater/dance club called the Majestic. I realized that this morning when I was crossing the street to get to the Law School and saw the local newspaper in the vending machine. (I get the NYT delivered at my house, not the local paper, because I don't want excess paper coming into the house, and the local paper is full of ads, self-help columns, sports, bad cartoons, and horoscopes--the sort of trash the Times generally avoids.)

So Dean spoke at a pretty little theater/dance club that made for some nice photographs, but I can't even find one to link too. About 500 people showed up for a 20 minute appearance, a far cry from the 5000 who showed up to see him in October at the Kohl Center (UW's big arena). The Wisconsin State Journal covered last night's event:

Dean said he's tired of Bush dividing the nation by race, religion, sexual orientation and on the abortion issue.

He also faulted Bush for "playing the race card" by repeatedly referring to the University of Michigan's affirmative action program as "quotas."

"We hate Michigan!" one of Dean's supporters hollered, referring to the university's sports teams.

And these were the people political enough to show up on a winter night in the part of town where you'll probably have to pay to park. Oh well.

I saw my first yard sign in my neighborhood today. A Kerry sign sprang up overnight in my neighbor's yard. The only sign of Dean support I've seen recently was a young guy in a parka trudging down the street carrying a big cutout photo of Dean's head on a picket-sign type stick. It seemed pretty funny and sad, but at least in one sense Dean is a head in Wisconsin.

"The last-stand-in-Cheeseland plan." Thanks, Washington Post. That's really the way I like to think about Wisconsin.

Dean Says He Will Quit Race if He Fails to Win Wisconsin.

Dr. Dean predicted decent showings in this weekend's caucuses in Michigan and in Washington state and Maine, but said "our true test will be the Wisconsin primary," where a victory, he said, could propel the campaign forward to the major showdowns on March 2, known as Super Tuesday, and March 9.

"All that you have worked for these past months," he warned, "is on the line on a single day, in a single state."

Hmmm.... kind of exciting for us here in Wisconsin. Maybe I will venture out of the office this afternoon--after holing up indoors ignoring the winter for weeks--and see what sort of political action we're getting in Madison.

(Also reported here and here.)

The Dean-o-Phobe retires:

... Dean is finished as a potential nominee. He's blown all his money, his campaign is in disarray, and he's turned to an inside-the-Beltway Democrat to run his campaign. ...

... Deanism is dead as well. By "Deanism" ... I mean ... the belief that some combination of technology and Dean's charisma can somehow suspend all the known laws of politics ... It's apparent to just about everybody--except, perhaps, the die-hards on the left who always believed it--that neither Dean nor anybody else has the ability to conjure millions of new voters out of thin air merely by making the differences between Republicans and Democrats sufficiently stark. ...

... John Kerry takes all the fun out of Dean-o-phobia. Indeed, if there's anybody who could make Dean attractive, it's Kerry. Kerry is a miserable candidate, bereft of political skills, and possessing of a record and a persona tailor-made for Karl Rove. The Republicans will merely have to say about Kerry what they said about Gore--that he wants to be on every side of every issue, that he's culturally out of touch with mainstream America, that he's a pompous bore--and this time the sale will be easier, because all these things are far more true of Kerry than of Gore. ....

Is Kerry like Gore? Chris Suellentrop has this:

I don't want to overstate Kerry's flaws. He's not Al Gore. He comes across as good-humored, decent, and likable rather than phony. And he doesn't pander mindlessly on every subject.

Yes, why not kick around Al Gore a little more, as we struggle to avoid dying of boredom trying to find a way to talk about Kerry for the next nine months?