Dean's Coming Right Turn

EDM's Ruy Tuixeira has some thoughts on Dean's need to start moving to the right.

Findings from a recently-released Pew Research Center poll of likely Democratic primary/caucus participants underscore this problem. Just 5 percent of these Democratic voters choose Dean as a Democratic candidate who would do a "particularly good job" protecting the nation from terrorism (and respondents could select more than one candidate if they wished). Now, if Democrats have a hard time associating this issue with Dean, it's a reasonable assumption general election voters will have an equally or more difficult time.

The Pew poll also finds that just 36 percent of these likely Democratic primary voters favor repealing all of the Bush tax cuts, as Dean does. This is actually less than the number (42 percent) who would prefer to repeal the tax cuts for the wealthy, while keeping the rest of the cuts in place. And this is among Democrats. It'a very fair assumption that Dean's position will be an even harder sell among the general election electorate - particularly the moderates and conservatives mentioned above.

He presents a two point plan which, if implemented, would go a long ways towards convincing me - and I suspect quite a few moderate Democratic liberal hawks - that Dean is an electable candidate.

1. A Sister Souljah moment on the loony anti-war left. Dean, as Robert Kagan and others have pointed out is no George McGovern on foreign policy and fighting terror. Time to let the voters know that. There is certainly no dearth of nutty groups or far-out intellectuals who could be usefully denounced as failing to understand the need for America to fight terror with every means at its disposal. Iraq may have been an ill-conceived use of American power, but that does not mean the exertion of American power is always a bad idea. And so on.

2. Preserve the middle class tax cuts. As Paul Krugman and others have pointed out, eliminating all the Bush tax cuts is not economically necessary. And the polling data couldnt be clearer about what a bad idea it is politically. Time to tell the American people the really serious problem with the Bush tax cuts is the huge tax breaks going to the folks who dont need it. Well take those back, then move toward real tax reform that shifts the tax burden away from work and closes tax loopholes for the wealthy. And so on.