Saturday, February 07, 2004

Meet the Deaniacs

It's the name they've given themselves. The Deaniacs. They were there in force at our neighborhood caucus, marching up to any poor soul lacking a Dean button and, without even introducing themselves, putting their intense little faces up to ours and telling us how pathetic our candidates are and how anyone failing to support their candidate is ignorant, selfish, pitiable, and might as well be a Republican.

The best offense, in their downloaded-from-the-web playbook, is a good offense--and boy, were they offensive.

There are plenty of good reasons to support Dean, but I can now say from firsthand experience that the company sure isn't one of them. (Of course, not all of the Dean supporters were carrying on like Deaniacs. Some of them, in fact, looked mildly embarrassed by their bedfellows' tactics, and when the appropriate time came to speak out in the princinct caucus meetings, were quite eloquent and convincing.)

I caught a few minutes of Ariana Huffington's comments on today's "Left, Right, and Center" radio program and she described Iowa Democrats as horrified by the brusque, arrogant behavior of the Deaniacs. She then goes on to attribute Dean's poor showing there to the Deaniacs treatment of the natives, though I suspect that's an oversimplification.

Our precinct awarded two delegates to Dean, one to Kerry, and one to Kucinich. I'm the Kerry delegate to the May 1 caucus (the next level up in the Washington Democrats' system).

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