Frank:

I respond to your points one by one:

No the media had nothing to do with it. Only my personal observations of the style of campaigning.

How have you seen the style of campaigning? I imagine it's through the media. Unless you've been touring with both candidates. If you have, I apologize for the inference.

As to the lobbying issue, both Dean and Kerry have received
corporate money. Lobbyists money. But not a lot compared
to the Bush coffers.

Every candidate has received lobbyist's money, because lobbyists are people too, and they give money. But I repeat, according to the Washington Post AND the New York Times, Kerry has received more special interest money than any other Senator for the last fifteen years. Much of this money comes from corporations and lobbyists whose industries he regulates! Granted, it's less than Bush has, but it's a lot, not a little.

Meanwhile, Dean has received VERY LITTLE money from Lobbyists, and his average campaign donation is about a hundred dollars. He has collected his money from vast numbers of individual Americans. Even people who write him off as a loss at this point, Like CNN's Mark Shields, admit that he has showed the Democratic party a MUCH CLEANER method of fundraising. Spin it however you want, Dean is much less beholden to corporate special interests than Kerry.

Is it a "scurrilous attack" to suggest there may have been some quid pro quo?"

Yes, because without proof it is spin.

Then it is spin that Bush misled the American People, because there might still be WMD in Iraq. And if there aren't, then Maybe Bush was himself misled by the evil CIA. It is Spin that Osama Bin Laden is behind 9/11, and it is spin that the Supreme Court backed Bush and installed him as president on ideological grounds. It is spin that Al Gore won the popular vote, since the recount never occurred and many absentee ballots were not counted.

Sometimes, there is no proof. Sometimes, there will never be proof. There is, however, a lot of evidence. Kerry's special interest money went disproportionately to the states he would need to win to get the presidential nomination. The team at Newsweek think this means quid pro quo, and so do I. There is at least as much evidence for this as for the proposition that Bush purposely misled Americans on the war. I believe that one, too.

This is very telling. It shows that Dean is not able to
mobilize the Democratic Party to his behalf. Now why is that?

It's been common knowledge from the beginning that the Democratic Party as a whole did not want Dean to win the nomination. There are many reasons. Partly, it's because he DIDN'T do things like Kerry did, in setting up a shady soft-money fundraising factory and funneling the proceeds to well-connected party insiders. Partly it's just because the party is controlled by the right-leaning faction that Clinton brought into power. But it's not the message. Dean's message has been adopted by all the leading candidates.

You also say that the DNC says,

"whoa, don't do that! You'll win the election for Bush!" I am sick of that kind of self-serving hypocrisy.

It was true the last time when Nader helped to split the votes in 2000. It's not self-serving to want to rid the country of
Bush.

My point is, why wasn't it true three weeks ago when Dean was the front-runner and Kerry, Gephardt et al were attacking him? At that time, the DNC was perfectly happy to let the attacks go on. Dean even publicly challenged Terry Mac to step in. He did not. Therefore, it is hypocritical, a mere three weeks later, to say that any attacks on the front runner are disloyal.

The same thing would happen with Dean. They'll go after him tooth and nail and question his ethics and dig up the same spin on him.

They've been trying for a year. The best they came up with was "he's angry, and he said the Caucus process was arcane." There is no dirt to find on his marriage, family life, etc., and his record is much better known at this point than any of the other candidates'. He has been highly exposed for a long time, and nothing has yet come out.

Dean is at present outspending Kerry on his campaign.

Now who's engaging in unsupported spin? The rumors were that Dean had a meager 5 million left, but when the figures were released it was nine million, with a million and a half more raised in the last week. Dean has pulled his ads in the Feb 3rd states to stop spending and concentrate on later races with more delegates at stake. Therefore, it's extremely unlikely he is outspending Kerry at this point. So where's your evidence for this factoid?

The inference was that people who fly the confederate flag should
vote for Dean because he was trying
to woo the stereotypical idea of the white Southerner.

That is YOUR inference. It was John Edwards's inference, too.   Al Sharpton's inference was that it was a racial slur against blacks. Sorry, I put you in the Sharpton camp instead of the Edwards camp.

To respond to your concerns, then: what sense would it make to appeal to people while using a negative stereotype of them? Would he say "those lazy Mexicans ought get off their siesta-taking asses and vote for us," or "those stupid, inbred hillbillies in West Virginia ought to be voting for us?" No, that would make no sense, because he would offend the people he was trying to appeal to!

He was in fact saying something far more simple: exactly what he said. That was, once again, that white southerners with the Confederate Flag on their trucks ought to be voting for us.

Does anyone deny that there ARE such people? If so, I beg to differ. I've seen them. And since those people presumably KNOW they have the confederate flag on their trucks, they would not be offended by the description. So given that they exist, and that Dean's appeal makes most sense if you assume he is really talking to them, why does Dean have to be engaging a stereotype when he mentions them? THIS, my friend, is spin.

" Dean has made his deep understanding of this issue clear on repeated occasions, including a speech about the
"Southern Strategy" and why we need to unite Blacks and Whites around issues of self-interest,"

Then why didn't he say that?

He DID say that! Once again, I have to ask if you really watched that debate? He said that blacks and whites have the same needs and the same issues in states like SC, that they all need healthcare, jobs and education. On that basis, white southerners with the Confederate Flag on their trucks ought to be voting Democratic. At present, he said, they are voting against their own interests.

What happened next? The media picked up on the "confederate flag" remark and spun it one way ("Dean's Loose Lips,") Sharpton spun it another way ("Dean's insensitivity to blacks,") and Edwards a third way (Dean's stereotyping of southerners).

In fact, Dean was speaking about a very specific group of people, people whose interests would be served by voting Democratic, but who vote Republican anyway, because they have been brainwashed by the Republican "Southern Strategy" into fearing black people. The meaning was pretty clear in its immediate context (Carol Moseley Braun knew exactly what he meant, and said so), and completely clear in the full context of Dean's very public remarks on race. The media, whose job SHOULD be to put such things in context so we have a better chance of understanding them, instead took it out of its context, so it was hard to understand.

Another reason, BTW, why he didn't say evrything I've said above is that in the context of a debate you have limited time.

Maybe you'll have added your "more later" by the time I post this. I look forward to it!