doodledee

After Al 'I Shaved My Beard Months Ago' Gore threw his weight behind Howard Dean the other day, I'm convinced - like basically everyone else - that Dean will win the Democratic nomination. I'm also convinced that he can't beat Bush. Here's why:

1. He's too uptight. Seriously, can you imagine hearing Dean telling a dirty joke? Neither can I. After W and [especially] Clinton, people have grown accustomed to a little bit of horseplay from their leadership. Dean just doesn't come across as that type of dude.
2. He's too hip. Well he's probably not too hip personally, but his campaign has a certain 'hipness' feel to it. It's all about email and weblogs and meet-ups and all that crap. The paper writes stories about people who are probably maybe most likely going to vote for Dean like they're some kind of new counter culture wireless enabled revolutionary. It'll be impossible to keep the underfunded, underground, underdog myth alive until the election. There has got to be a backlash, his demographic is just too cynical. After all, if trucker hats didn't last 3 months, how can the Dean Train expect to last 11?
3. He's too smart. Again, I guess I don't know if he's really all that smart, but he comes across as being kind of a smarty pants, and that turns people off. Ordinary people want to vote for some chucklehead guy they can relate to. Clinton got away with being super smart by acting like the type of guy who could tell a good dirty joke. (See #1).
4. He's too mean and angry. And sure, that rage stuff plays great with the upper-middle-class-oh-my-god-i-hate-bush-so-much-i-could-spit-now-lets-go-for-a-ride-in-my-saab crowd, but it's not going to go over well on a national stage. I think it's a September 11 thing, although I've read talk that the memory of 9/11 will have completely faded by next fall, so who knows. What I do know is that - as expected at this stage of the game - he's full of vitriolic rage and that once that message reaches a wider audience, it very well may turn them off.
5. Bush has too much money. Expect to see anti-Dean rhetoric out of the Bush administration starting in late January. (That's right: 10 months of Bush commercials. Thank god for fake tivo.) And with Wacko Left Dean trying to win the Democratic nomination (see #4), he'll be a much easier target than the Reasonable Centrist Dean we'll see come July. Could get real ugly real fast.

So there you have it. Like I said, it's early. I reserve the right to say I was wrong on any/all of the points I made above. Read at your own risk.