My eyes throb like I've been crying all day.  Which I haven't been.  Not all day, anyway.  But it has been an emotional 24 hours.  My Dad [here for his yearly visit from Israel] have been butting heads all day.  So badly that I called my therapist mid afternoon and she agreed to see me this afternoon.  36-friggin years old and my dad's "constructive" criticism still sends me tumbling down that dark, cold, well of self-loathing.   He and I had it out a bit and I think he will lay off some.  At least TLG is enjoying having his "saba" here. [Hebrew for Grandfather].

Straight from my therapists office to the meeting that I alluded to mysteriously yesterday.  It's official: I will be serving as Campaign Manager for a local guy who will run for City Council in our fair little town.  I've never done anything exactly like this before, though I have done some grassroots organizing and advocacy work.  But I think the guy in question will be a good Councilperson, and working on his campaign will be a fun, 3 month gig.  [It's a volunteer position of course, no paid staff on a campaign this local.]  We had an initial strategy session tonight.  He seemed really pleased with the ideas and insights I brought to the table. 

In any case it's been a long and more-intense-than-usual 24 hours.  I am still hoping to go to the Dean Meet-up tomorrow night.  I enjoyed volunteering for the Bradley Campaign in 99-2000 so I would like to do some Dean work too.  We'll see how I feel tomorrow night...

11:21:49 PM    

The transcript of Dean's appearance on Larry King Live in now available on-line.  Some of my fav parts [all emphasis is, of course, mine]:

When asked by King whether he was "hurt" by the recent attacks by his fellow '04 Dems:

Listen, if that's the worst I get in this campaign, I'll be in good shape.

Look, these guys have worked hard. They want to be president. Any one of them would be better than the president they have now. But what our party really has to have is some backbone. We are not going to beat George Bush by voting for things like No Child Left Behind, which is a huge middle class tax increase, property tax increase. We're not going to beat him by doing as Senator Lieberman and others did, voting for some of the president's tax cuts because those tax cuts have really harmed our economy and taken jobs away from Americans; and we're not going to beat the president without casting a critical eye on the statements that he made leading up to the Iraq war, when so many of them have now turned out not to be so.

I love that he acknowledges his competition in that positive way.  Contrast that with what Lieberman has been saying about him and Gephart.   Similarly, when asked by a caller later in the program whether Dean would run as an independent if he does not receive the nomination, Dean says, emphatically: 

No, I will not.

I will not run as independent. I will support the nominee. It is essential that George Bush not be re-elected for the future of this country. It is essential for our economy. It's essential, so we can regain the respect we had around the world. And I will under no circumstances run as a third party and independent. I will back the nominee.

And he continues:

I hope I am the nominee because I can bring about half those votes that voted for Ralph Nader back into the party. That's how we are going to win. And I think at this point there is no other evidence that any of the other candidates can do that and I think that's why I'm the most likely to beat George Bush.

Given that the Green party has selfishly and unwisely chosen to run a presidential candidate, I hope the Doctor is right about that. 

When asked by King how can he "account" for his fundraising success so far, Dean says:

It's average people in my party and independents. You know, I was in a fund-raiser in San Diego at 8:00 in the morning, which is sacrilege in California, and we had Perot people, we had McCain people, we had Green Party people, and we had a huge number of Democrats. There are a lot of independents and Democrats who don't think huge budget deficits are a good thing, who were really upset about the nearly three million private sector jobs that this president has lost, and upset, frankly, about his foreign policy, which appears to be based on things that the president didn't think were necessary to share with the American people.

So I think by standing up and being who you are, people reward you for that. There are going to be some things that people don't agree with me on, but they're going to know where I stand and they're going to know that I'm not going to be afraid to tell them what the facts are.

I loved this last quote.  This, above all, is what attracts me to Dean, and this is what I think the professional pundits and polticos are missing about him.  We are so thirsty for a no bull-shit real leader.  If one was going to use words based on what they really mean, rather than how they have been spun and co-opted than the phrase compassionate [fiscal] conservative would suit Dean well.   Speaking of spin, King seems to be buying into the meme that Dean is too liberal to win when he asks:

Would you say, Governor, that you will have to move more towards the center? Is the center where American politics lies?

And, Dean hits his answer out of the park.

Larry, I am [emphasis in original] in the center. I balanced budget. The president hasn't done so. I believe that states have the right to make their own gun laws, after enforcing the federal laws vigorously. I believe that we ought to have health insurance for every single American. Harry Truman put that in the Democratic Party platform in 1948. There's nothing that's not centrist about me. I just think that the party and the electorate, the Republican Party and even my own party has simply moved too far to the right.

Amen to that.

10:46:49 AM