Sorry fellow Deaniacs, but this is starting to get disturbing. From Slate's deputy Washington bureau chief Chris Suellentrop, responsible for some of the best (and most admiring) coverage of Dean all year:

Wrong Turn at Albuquerque

Howard Dean stumbles at the Democratic debate

. . . Lieberman brings up Dean's opposition to trading with countries that do not have the same labor and environmental standards as the United States, and he calls it "stunning": "He said he would not have bilateral trade agreements with any country that did not have American standards. That would mean we would not have trade agreements with Mexico, with most of the rest of the world. That would cost us millions of jobs." Then, after peppering Dean with jabs, Lieberman rears back to throw the knockout punch: If Dean were elected president and carried out his promised trade policies, "The Bush recession would be followed by the Dean depression."

Later, to drive the point home, the Lieberman campaign circulates a press release entitled, "HOWARD DEAN'S PROTECTIONIST TRADE POLICY WOULD DEVASTATE AMERICA'S ECONOMY."

Dean counters by insisting that trade agreements need mere "international standards," not American standards, on labor and the environment. But that's not what he told the Washington Post (as the Lieberman campaign helpfully points out in its release) on Aug. 25. More important from my perspective, it's the exact opposite of what Dean told me when I rode with him in July on his campaign van in Iowa. When I asked Dean if he meant just general "standards" or "American standards," he insisted that he would demand that other countries adopt the exact same labor, environmental, health, and safety standards as the United States. But the audience wasn't riding with me, and they rally to Dean in his time of need, applauding wildly. Lieberman is left to lamely reply, "That's a reassuring change of position."

Yikes. There have been a string of these, and they are making me more and more queasy about supporting the guy. He better straighten this shit out fast.

Suellentrop also refers to "another shocking flip-flop in the debate" on Iraq, but I think he's reading far too much in to one half of a comment Dean made. We'll see. But the trade thing is bad. I have a feeling he simply got a little carried away on some of his positions on national issues that are new to him--I have to admit that Lieb is right on this one--and he needs to iron the kinks out.

I am not among those nervous nellies who see the experience as a disqualification. The bulk of our recent presidents were governors, similarly new to a lot of issues. They work through that. They hire good advisors. You don't need to know everything day one. But if Dean wants to continue being The Candor Man, he needs to start admitting that, and admitting when he has to modify a position. I'm getting damn sick of this bullshitting about what he said, and damn worried about what it says about his character.

UPDATE:

I took the slightly-frightening step of jumping in among the true believers at the Dean blog with this charge/concern. To their credit, the debate there has been thoughtful and insightful (and thoroughly civil). Lots of people ready to take it seriously and some really good dialogue. You can read it here. I bring it up as the third post, and it moves on from there.

(And it's worth noting that I spent a lot of time at the Kerry blog about a week ago, and there was no debating, just attaboys for their guy. They asked me why I support Dean, I told them and their boilerplate responses were lame and discouraging. Couldn't get a useful dialogue going there. I was pleasantly surprised today to see how much more open the Dean supporters were to admitting imperfections--and listening and reacting, and not just spewing out the same old stuff.)

Such an interesting twist at the Dem debate last night. All those beltway boys--and Lieberman and Kerry supporters ad nauseum . . .--who said Dean could never win because he opposed the stupid war, and suddenly all the Dem candidates are backpedaling as fast as they can to act like they were against the war all along.

Interesting piece just posted on Salon by news editor and savant Joan Walsh. Here's the gist:

Come January, if Bush has repaired Iraq, frontrunner and war-critic Howard Dean might have to head home. But if Iraq is as sad and bloody as it seems today, everyone who voted for this war might have to pack their bags and turn their war chests over to the war opponents, for the good of the party, and the world, and their souls.

Blunt, but honest and right on the mark as always. Iraq could still haunt Dean, but more likely the eight dwarves. My favorite moment in the piece:

When war supporter Gephardt attacked Bush’s Iraq performance Thursday night -- "It's incomprehensible that we would wind up in this situation without a plan and without international cooperation to get this done" -- it was a little bewildering. Frankly, I found it equally incomprehensible how someone could support the war as Gephardt did, and now pretend that he didn’t know the president had no plan and no international cooperation to get it done. I knew that, sitting behind my desk in San Francisco, raising my teenaged daughter. Why didn’t anyone tell Gephardt, the savvy House minority leader?

The others got the same treatment, but that one was just too delicious.

A battle has been raging for months now which has been only sparsely reported, but could turn out to dramatically affect the presidential (nomination) race. It's very much a process story, but it could turn out to be a crucial story.

This summer, the Washington D.C. City City Council voted to move its primary to January 13, two weeks before New Hamshire. Of course that drove New Hampshire nuts--about the only reason most Americans are aware of their statehood is because of the dominant role they play in choosing presidents. And they have used that clout to successfully blackmail both parties into maintaining the clout. So Dem officials responded by threatening not to seat the D,C. delegates.

Grabbing NH's clout appears to be the secondary motive for D.C. The primary reason, they say, is to highlight the reprehnesible situation where they are unrepresented in Congress. But it could really shake up the presidential race. Instead of two rural, all-white states (IA and NH) whittling the field of candidates, the country's most urban, most urban entity with electoral votes is going first. Sort of.

Here's how AP describes the compromise recently reached:

While the District of Columbia's primary vote will be first, delegates will not formally be selected until caucuses February 14. In the world of elections, such a nonbinding vote is known as a "beauty contest" -- not so much a presidential primary as it is a straw poll to show voter opinion.

That last part is ridiculous. First, it was only a handful of elections back where many of the states had those beauty contests, and they were taken very seriously then. And straw poll is way off. This is a bone fide election administered by the state, with the electorate voting for the candidate of their choice.

The focus on delegates is preposterous when we're talking about places like IA and NH, with puny little delegate counts that will make little difference to anyone. These early states aren't about delegates, they're about demonstrating support, which creates momentum for money, press coverage, and the appearance of a winner that most American's base their votes on in the primaries. (Sad, but true.) The DC contest will tell us every bit as much as the ones in NH and IA about whether Dean or Kerry or Clark has best connected with actual voters in an actual election.

And there are other factors. The whole delegate thing has become a bit of a scam, with so many superdelgates--mostly party officials, gradually taking control back away from the primary voters. In D.C., 28 of the 38 delegates will be super-delegates. What a scam. The caucuses are only going to choose a quarter of the representatives at the national convention. So the AP's silly assessment looks all the more illogical

And D.C. Democracy Fund, the group that pushed for the early vote, is trying to use the super-delagates to get around the compromise in a wily manuever. So far, three have already committed to vote for the primary winner, and the group is pressuring others to join them. If they can get ten, than as many delegates will be chosen by the primary as the caucuses. So how will even AP nitwits continue to write it off as just a straw poll?

It will be up to the press to decide whether or not to take it seriously. God help us in the hands of those jackasses. My guess: they will largely resist for months leading up, but the prospect of missing a story will get the best of them--especially once a few break ranks and start treating it like a story. Then they'll all rush in and cover it. They'll continue with a lot of disclaimers, so it won't have the full impact of a New Hampshire, but at least half a New Hampshire.

Right now I'm just guessing about how much impact it will have. The press will take some of their cues from the candidates. If the candidates ignore it, there's no real contest and it becomes meaningless. But if they duke it out, then the press will pay attention. And things are looking good in that regard:

Regardless of the debate over semantics, there is no question the D.C. primary will have an impact on the presidential race, especially as a gauge of candidates' ability to win the support of black voters, according to Allan Lichtman, a political historian at American University.

"It will be a test for Howard Dean to see if he can get the black vote," Lichtman said of the former Vermont governor who has led in early polls in New Hampshire. "A win in D.C. could be very meaningful for Dean."

Dean has a major grass-roots presence in the city, but Sens. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, and John Edwards, D-North Carolina., are also taking the race seriously and have sent staffers to organize support ward by ward. Former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, once of two black candidates in the race, also has made a number of appearances in neighborhoods around the city.

Keep the appearances and resources coming guys. You can drive those goofballs into covering it if you take it seriously enough.

It will so nice to see a very different crowd get a voice for once. But the critical impact will come in the long term: Once D.C. gets taken half-serious this time, it will be the subject of massive attention next time, and could wedge in there the same way Iowa did in 1976. Ever since then it has been on an equal footing with NH. If all goes well, next election, we could have three. And we could start to break the stranglehold of those two annoying states on deciding our presidents (along with the press).

More on that in a later post.