Howard Dean's continued quixotic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is now beyond pathetic and Dean's recent attacks on his own party threaten its ability to unseat "President" Bush in November. He should EXIT right now. (Associated Press photo)
Dean should quit while he's behind
Now former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is beyond pathetic and he's looking like a worse spoiler than Ralph Nader (for whom I voted in 2000) -- worse because at least Nader was outside of the Democratic Party.
First, Dean is all over the map (literally) about how long he'll let his moribund campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination drag out.
Initially, Dean said he would be in the race at least through March 2, "Super Tuesday," when several states -- including California, New York, Minnesota, Ohio, front-runner Sen. John Kerry's home state of Massachusetts and Dean's home state of Vermont -- have their primaries and caucuses. Then, Dean said that the Wisconsin primary this Tuesday would be his last stand.
Now -- perhaps because polls (here's one of them) indicate that Kerry is going to kick his ass in Wisconsin, too -- Dean says he's going to keep going indefinitely because his cult members want him to.
Isn't the ability to make a decision a critical qualification for president? Even "President" Bush is lauded for his decisiveness (although I doubt that as "president" he has made a single good decision).
Dean's hardcore cult followers (and Dean himself, I suspect) remain in denial of the fact that Americans overwhelmingly don't want Dean to face Bush in the fall, so if Dean is telling the truth that he's continuing for his fanatics -- if it's not pure, raw ego that is keeping the "Energizer Bunny," as he has called himself, going and going and going -- it's still a bad idea for him to continue.
It would be tolerable for Dean to continue, except that now he has taken to attacking eventual Democratic presidential nominee Kerry and the Democratic Party as if by doing so he would have better than a snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination. (It's mathematically possible for Dean to win the nomination, but politically -- realistically -- he is very, very unlikely to get the nomination, so his attacks on Kerry and on the Democratic Party can serve only to possibly harm his party. Dean's attacks might make him and his equally smug supporters feel better about themselves, but he is doing no one else any favor by being a divider of his own party.)
After Dean's attack-dog tactics in Iowa, which are credited largely for his third-place finish there -- which in turn led to his barbaric yawp heard 'round the world and in turn led to his further free fall -- you would think that Dean would have learned his lesson.
Nope.
Desperate Dean is now going so far as to repeatedly compare Kerry to Bush. An interesting comparison for Dean to make, given that Bush's having gone AWOL from the National Guard is in the news. At least Bush was in the National Guard during the Vietnam War, even if he went missing. Dean went skiing in Aspen, Colo. during the Vietnam War, for which Kerry volunteered.
Divider-not-a-uniter Dean is much closer to Bush than Kerry is, at least where courage and character are concerned.
The voters see this: Kerry has won 12 of the 14 states that have had Democratic primaries and caucuses thus far. He has won states in every region of the nation. So far, according to The Associated Press, Kerry has 538, or 25 percent, of the 2,162 delegates needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
Dean has won not a single state and has accrued only 182 delegates, or only 8 percent of the number needed to win the nomination.
Reuters reports that at Dean's Kerry-bashing news conference in Milwaukee today, Dean inadvertently referred to Kerry as "President Kerry." Freudian slip? Does Dean perhaps have some dim perception of reality?
Dean needs to grow the fuck up and bow the fuck out, as did former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt, Florida Sen. Bob Graham and Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman when it became clear to them that they could not win the nomination. At what point, exactly, one has to wonder, will Dean let go?
Whatever future in national politics that he still might have Dean is blowing by being a sore fucking loser and harming his party's chances of beating Bush in November by continually blasting his own party.
But then, Powder Keg Dean is all about shooting himself in the foot and burning his bridges.
6:43:47 PM 
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