Madfloridian's Journal - Slate: Dean's a "blowhard", but he's "gotten better at behaving himself"

What a left-handed compliment...dealt by John Dickerson of Slate. He is so obvious about it.

Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus - Cite This Source
Main Entry: left-handed compliment
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: damning with faint praise
Synonyms: aspersion, back-handed compliment, home truth, insult, no compliment, slap in the face, slight, snub, uncomplimentary remark

He makes it clear Howard Dean won't be fired. In fact he says the Carville attacks strengthened his stance with the grassroots, and he linked to a post at MyDD in this article. Then he just has to get that dig in.

http://www.slate.com/id/2154259 /

They even put a picture of well-behaved Dean. (Yes, you do detect a note of sarcasm there.)

The better case against Dean is that he's a blowhard who says the wrong thing repeatedly in front of cameras. We know that's true, but Dean has gotten better at behaving himself—his mild response to Carville being a case in point Even his detractors point out that while Republicans tried hard to make Dean an issue, they couldn't. This time, it was John Kerry who provided the late-in-the-election radioactive gaffe. Dean has been so disciplined that most people don't even know he's there. In a recent Pew poll that asked people to name the leader of the Democratic Party, only 3 percent named Dean. More people named Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi as Democratic leader. Sixty percent of respondents don't think the party has one.

Please notice he insults Kerry head on here, doesn't even try for left-handed. Then he actually misrepresented the Pew Poll about who are the leaders in the party. Please note that the majority got it right...they said nobody is or don't know.

That is correct...there is no one leader right now. There really is no good way to get a correct answer on this. Most Democrats know there is not one actually.

From the Pew Poll:
http://people-press.org/reports/display.ph...

There is little party divide over perceptions of the Democratic leadership Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi are mentioned most frequently by Republicans, Democrats and independents. But within the Democratic Party, liberals and conservatives take a somewhat different view. Among liberal Democrats, 14% cite Howard Dean as the party's leader, on par with the percentage who cite Clinton (14%) and Pelosi (13%). But just 2% of moderate and conservative Democrats name Dean, while 14% name Clinton and 9% name Pelosi. No other leader stands out in the minds of moderate and conservative Democrats; most are unable to name anyone as the party's leader these days.

Another left-handed compliment. I am not sure how many more there will be. And another ugly slap at Kerry. I fear it will get worse.