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Gov. Dean Levels Harsh Criticism At President Obama, Confident Dems Will Retain House Majority

08/23/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
The former Governor of Vermont and Chairman of the Democratic National Party Howard Dean believes that the Democrats will retain a slender majority in the House of Representatives in November.  According to Dean on CNN’s “State of the Union” program “I’d bet money on the Senate, for sure.  The House is much tougher.  We’re going to win in the House and we’re going to have a majority.  It will probably be reduced to. . .perhaps as small as a five- or ten-seat majority.”

The Senate is, and has been, a hard victory for the Republicans to obtain as they have blown their opportunity to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and to retain the seats held by Republicans in New Hampshire and Kentucky.  There is a strong probability that Florida will go to the increasingly Left leaning Independent Charlie Crist.  It is likely that the Republicans will capture Arkansas and North Dakota.

The House is harder to predict, but it is likely that the Democrats will lose many of the Conservative “Blue Dog” districts that were already vulnerable while picking up at least one seat in New Orleans.

Dean made what was, perhaps, the most salient point.  He stated “We simply have better candidates.”  The push from the Tea Party and the flap over the Muslim community center in New York may actually push many Moderate voters away from the Republican Party at a time when they are in most desperate need of those votes.  Additionally, while the Republican National Committee is strapped for cash, the Democrats have a lot on hand for the ground game in November.  The ancillary Republican committees may have money, but the bulk of that is for advertising.  Ads only get people so far on election day.

Governor Dean was far less kind when it came to his opinions regarding President Barack Obama. Candy Crowley, the host of “State of the Union” asked Dean “But certainly, you have voiced, on “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” and on the health care bill, some of the real misgivings that the left has had about some of the things the president has done. And it boils down to this, this fall, do you think the left sits home or do you think the left goes out to the polls? And what gets them there?”

Dean replied “Well, look, I don’t think that the left — what Gibbs was talking about with the so-called professional left — I don’t know what he meant by that. You know, I think — but that is a very small number of people. I think there are a large number — I think that the people around the president have really misjudged what goes on elsewhere in the country, other than Washington, D.C.  I don’t think this is true of the president, but I do think his people, his political people, have got to go out and spend some time outside Washington for a while. The average Democrat is a progressive. And, you know, there are some things that are upsetting about the kind of deals that were made by the president’s people on health care.”

When President Barack Obama was first elected, many people felt that they were witnessing an ushering in of a New Camelot, or a New New Deal.  Instead, they received the same kind of problems that the nation had faced under President George W. Bush, and while people did call for patience, Obama often tried too hard to compromise with the Republicans, who kept moving the goal posts, and the corporations who were far from sympathetic to the suffering of the people that they employed.  When conditions on the ground necessitated actual changes, Obama was less than capable of having his team explain why those changes were necessary.

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