{"id":1821,"date":"2004-01-18T03:08:43","date_gmt":"2004-01-18T10:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2004\/01\/mad-howie-in-the-weeds\/"},"modified":"2004-01-18T03:08:43","modified_gmt":"2004-01-18T10:08:43","slug":"mad-howie-in-the-weeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2004\/01\/18\/mad-howie-in-the-weeds\/","title":{"rendered":"Mad Howie in the weeds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tWith three days to go in Iowa, the wheels are coming off <a title=\"MSNBC - POLL-Kerry opens a lead in tight Iowa race\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3977320\/\">angry dwarf Howard Dean&#8217;s campaign:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>January 16, 2004 &#8211; Democratic presidential contender John Kerry opened a five-point lead on three tightly bunched rivals in Iowa three days before the state&#8217;s caucuses, according to a Reuters\/MSNBC\/Zogby poll released on Friday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I figured the Dean campaign would self-destruct sooner or later, because shoot-from-the-hip pandering doesn&#8217;t work as well as the calculated pandering of political pro&#8217;s, but this early decay, which is also happening in New Hampshire, is surprising. Apparently Dean got a lot of early attention by taking extreme positions and running more of a sustained temper-tantrum than a campaign, and as the time comes for voters to take a closer look, he&#8217;s not holding up too well, even in the uncritical eyes of Democratic Party regulars. This was the same dynamic that took John McCain down, so it&#8217;s utterly predictable.<\/p>\n<p>With his back up against the wall, Dean has rolled out the heavy guns on his behalf &#8211; Martin &#8220;Jed Bartlett&#8221; Sheen and Rob &#8220;Meathead&#8221; Reiner are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wcfcourier.com\/articles\/2004\/01\/15\/news\/metro\/2b59e8678b39b3e386256e1c004f4ec3.txt\">campaigning with him <\/a>in Iowa, all the better to reach the &#8220;off their meds&#8221; demographic who believe Sheen is president and Reiner&#8217;s a political activist. <\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s working, judging by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3986142\/\">Saturday poll <\/a>that shows Dean wiping out Kerry&#8217;s lead. Now there&#8217;s a man who knows his demographic.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With three days to go in Iowa, the wheels are coming off angry dwarf Howard Dean&#8217;s campaign: January 16, 2004 &#8211; Democratic presidential contender John Kerry opened a five-point lead on three tightly bunched rivals in Iowa three days before the state&#8217;s caucuses, according to a Reuters\/MSNBC\/Zogby poll released on Friday. I figured the Dean &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2004\/01\/18\/mad-howie-in-the-weeds\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mad Howie in the weeds&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-tn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}