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I am so thankful to Dr. Dean — and to the movement he’s started — for rekindling hope in me and giving a spine transplant to the Democratic Party in the U.S. that I’m marching out the door Tuesday morning (February 10) to vote for Dean in the Tennessee primary.

Howard Dean is the only presidential candidate in my lifetime whose campaign I’ve been passionate about — it’s helped me believe my participation makes a difference, and that collectively we the people can take back our country. We can transform our country into one characterized by courage, straight talk, trustworthiness, balanced budgets, and healthy relationships among ourselves and with the world.

My vote will be one fully for Dean; any other vote would be lessened by being partly for the candidate but mostly against someone else. I am tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, and this day, for once in my memory, I won’t have to.

Of course I’m disappointed that the numbers of us choosing to vote similarly isn’t surging, whatever the reasons. One reason gives me pause about the efficacy of democracy’s equal voting representation: when I consider that someone who makes a voting decision Tuesday AM based on the front page of Tuesday’s USA Today has exactly the same political decision-making input I do when I’ve been studying these guys for seven months, it seems not quite right.

But in the end I let go of that conceit and insist that all of us have voices. Commitment to this democratic ideal implies a next step of reforming the media back to being a diverse chorus of voices and views for people to consider instead of being a monotonous, far-too-influential, agenda-laden handful of voices as it is now. A healthy democracy requires a diverse and informed electorate, not one misled by talking heads’ talking points.

For example, what’s up with the media declaring any candidate the winner when most of the nation’s primary voters haven’t yet cast a vote? That just doesn’t make sense in something called a democracy.

A Rainbow Brightens the Day, © caitlin conoverWhat happened to grace? Given primary results so far, is my earlier discernment without merit? — that “Dr. Dean’s campaign is where the grace falls. If God indeed guides our paths, rescuing us from ourselves — and of course I think he does — then this is where I sense he’s busiest. And where he’s smiling.”

Maybe. But because I credit the Dean campaign with initiating the tectonic plate shift that’s begun in U.S. politics, I think I was in the ballpark but without any sense of the final score, something that happens to me all the time.

I amuse myself thinking that intuition-plus-discernment is like a barometer that makes sweeping atmospheric change visible well before its effects appear (clear skies, raindrops). The data provided by a barometer yield no precise forecasts on their own, but we still value the barometer’s input in revealing invisible trends.

The situation as I see it theologically: The God of scripture and my experience is a God of transformation. And transformation finally appears to be underway in our U.S. political landscape. The Dean Phenomenon by most accounts has played an important role in initiating and fueling this transformation: Dr. Dean’s ideas are alive and well, having been appropriated into and now transforming the candidacies of those around him. Hence I think I can still sanely infer that Dean’s campaign is where the grace falls.

Now where grace rains down next will be interesting to see. Maybe it’s spreading further than I had dared imagine.

It has felt like rain in the desert, and I’m thankful for every drop.

2004-02-09 update: Jon Carroll captures the essence of Dean’s contribution very skillfully in SF Chronicle column Thank Howard Dean for Leading His Party Out of the Darkness.

Tonight as I turn in before voting tomorrow AM, I’m pondering the out-of-control budget deficit (and worse, debt) situation we’re facing in the United States, and thinking how much we need Dean’s year-in, year-out budget balancing expertise at our financial rudder. I imagine his “doctor’s bluntness” could help in this situation: We’re going to stop this hemorrhage so you won’t die. But it’s going to hurt. Much saner than “you can have it all, including Mars, and tax cuts, too.”

2004-02-10 update: Done! I stared at the glowing red LED beside “Howard Dean” for a long time before I pressed the VOTE button, remembering, savoring. Making a fully congruent vote like this is a matter of joyous significance for me; it’s my first in a quarter-century of voting AFAICR.

Steph and I were two among a total of four voters in our precinct at 8:15 AM. I don’t know if that’s a data point pointing to a poor primary turnout in Tennessee, or that we live in an intractably Republican suburb whose voters by and large see no need to vote today.

My rules of thumb:
Vote your conscience in a primary — forget “electability.”
Vote the best interests of your country and the world in a general
(which in the U.S. too often means choosing the least-bad candidate among those left standing).

I am still pro-Dean, and always will be, but I hereby expand my scope to ABB.

I am absolutely flabbergasted:
Media admits Dean “scream” was a cheer in the midst of a roaring crowd.

Small step though this is, and late in coming, I still appreciate it because I expected no acknowledgement at all from the media that anything wrong was done.

ABC News and Diane Sawyer have aired a mea culpa concerning the media’s hyperplay of Howard Dean’s “primal scream” speech following the Iowa caucuses on Monday, January 19. Read what I’m talking about at ABC’s The Dean Scream: The version of reality that we didn’t see on TV (alt article), and watch the video (alt video).

After my interview with Dean and his wife in which I played the tape again — in fact played it to them — I noticed that on that tape he’s holding a hand-held microphone. One designed to filter out the background noise. It isolates your voice, just like it does to Charlie Gibson and me when we have big crowds in the morning. The crowds are deafening to us standing there.

But the viewer at home hears only our voice.

So, we collected some other tapes from Dean’s speech including one from a documentary filmmaker, tapes that do carry the sound of the crowd, not just the microphone he held on stage. …

Dean’s boisterous countdown of the upcoming primaries as we all heard it on TV was isolated, when in fact he was shouting over the roaring crowd.

And what about the scream as we all heard it? In the room, the so-called scream couldn’t really be heard at all. Again, he was yelling along with the crowd.

This glimmer of integrity on the part of Diane Sawyer and ABC News — and I’ll assume it’s indeed integrity instead of anything less savory — makes my day. Not just because I’m a Dean fan but also because this tidbit sets me dreaming of a world in which mainstream media coverage actually is fair and balanced (or at least in the F&B ballpark) instead of superficial, repetitious, and often therefore misleading, sometimes to the point of slander.

This piece along with Diane’s lame-questioned but good-natured — and surprisingly compelling — interview with Howard and Judy Dean last Thursday (transcript and video links) has me prepared to wipe Diane’s slate clean, to give her a fresh chance. Hey, it feels great to do this! Hmmm …

Now if Bill Maher revokes his “new rule” that says — as a result of the TV version of the scream speech — that Uncle Howie is the “creepy guy,” then I’d really be a happy man. :-)

Update: To the objection that the TV version is what matters, I say, No — the real life version — of just about everything — is what really matters. Getting real is essential for engaging and solving the intractable social problems before us. Just playing a politician on TV doesn’t cut it.

Dr. Dean meets my realness criterion, and more important, his campaign is inspiring further realness to bloom in people all around the country. It’s this inspired realness — this hope, this talent, this engagement, this passion — among hundreds of thousands of us that’s even now changing the fabric of our country.

Is there steam enough in this to win? I don’t know. Is there enough to make a difference? Oh, yes.

Wow, I had almost forgotten I can dance to this vision thing. I’ve been sitting too long.

2004-02-01 update: Magnanimous as I was trying to be above, it’s still important to point out that the deliberate escalation of this “scream” nonevent into a national scene preoccupying the airwaves was attempted character assassination. It was a broad jump from fact into manufactured fancy that actually accomplished more character assassination per datum than I remember ever seeing before, kind of an Olympic gold in irresponsible journalism, which is itself fascinating in a perverse sort of way.

As Krista Pollitt at The Nation memorably puts it —

This, after all, is the same media that managed to make a major scandal out of the Scream, a moment of campaign exuberance of zero importance (especially when compared with — for example! — Bush’s inability to speak two consecutive unscripted sentences that are not gibberish, his refusal to read newspapers, and the fact that much of the world thinks he’s a dangerous moron).

[originally via Dean for America]

Yesterday I was peering into what’s behind this week’s tidal wave of Democratic candidate Howard Dean criticism and merrymaking. As ABC News put it —

Dean’s guttural yells Monday night punctuated his poor finish [in Iowa] and raised questions about his political judgment and temperament. …

A humbled Howard Dean, saying “I have my warts. I sometimes say things that get me in trouble,” argued Thursday that voters will see through his flaws and rally to his troubled presidential candidacy.

I have a scream. Dean’s post-caucus Iowa speech on Monday night, variously called his “barbaric yawp” or “primal scream” speech, is here (Real video). I see fatigue-induced goofiness, maybe, but crazy? Nearly every football game I’ve ever been to is crazier than this. Looks like everyone there was having fun.

Why is it not “presidential” for Dean to coach and rev his tired supporters after a disappointing finish in Iowa, but is “presidential” for Bush to look and sound like — let’s face it — a total effing moron illiterate on national TV?

We’re being way too gullible to what the media tubesters tell us. Most of us can think for ourselves, so why the hell aren’t we?

As Dr. Dean said later about the event, “I was giving everything to people who gave everything to me.”

[2004-01-24 insert: Remixes of this event have become an Internet phenomenon. What started as ridicule has become a vehicle for getting the message out — cool! Some remixes are funny, and this one, You’ve Got the Power (MP3 audio, 3.9MB), is outright inspiring. See DeanGoesNuts.com for more.]

I am one voter — a Christian voter in the U.S. South — who likes this passion and this whole-person commitment. I’ll spit out lukewarm in a heartbeat, just like someone else I know.

So why do I find this campaign hot? Because I want my country back. I want hope, not hopelessness. Cooperation, not division. Straight talk that doesn’t insult my intelligence, not secrecy, empty promises, and lies. Compassion, not disdain for everyone who’s different. Responsibility, not the wanton squandering of lives and resources. In particular, fiscal responsibility, not the saddling of our children and our children’s children with debt. Faithfulness, not the blasphemy of associating God’s name with behavior God abhors.

What a difference a day makes —

Dr. Judy in the house. Last night Diane Sawyer interviewed Howard and Judy Dean on Primetime Live (transcript and video links). The realness, warmth, and candor conveyed in this interview confirms my longstanding discernment that Dr. Dean’s campaign is where the grace falls. If God indeed guides our paths, rescuing us from ourselves — and of course I think he does — then this is where I sense he’s busiest. And where he’s smiling.

[2004-01-24 insert: Naturally now I can’t help but wonder if this wacky remix phenom might be another case of “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Joseph, Gen. 50:20). :-) ]

We may yet derail what’s going on — and/or I could be <gasp> wrong about its details — but this burst of sunlight gets me back to knowing that we are being cared for.

2004-01-29 update: For my notes (and links) concerning Diane Sawyer’s surprise mea culpa — an apology of sorts for contributing to the media’s gross misrepresentation of this speech — see blog entry If Howard screams in a crowd, can anybody hear it?.