While serving 11 years as Vermont’s governor, Howard Dean was considered a moderate by those who knew him. Unlike his presidential campaign, which is drawing support from thousands of liberals nationwide, the left in the Green Mountain State generally didn’t like, and didn’t even trust, Dean during his years in office. (It’s one reason the liberals in Vermont have formed their own Progressive Party and are helping to split the left’s vote and elect Republicans.)
Nevertheless, Dean frequently mentions his moderation in his drive to position himself as an electable national candidate. Every time a skeptic suggests Dean’s too liberal to beat Bush in ’04, Dean essentially says, “Liberal? Everyone in Vermont knows I’m a moderate.”
It’s not always persuasive, and it may not work if Dean succeeds in getting the nomination, but that’s his argument and he’s sticking to it. Fine.
As some of his critics have noted, however, being a “Vermont moderate” isn’t the same thing as being, say, a “South Carolina moderate.” It all depends on the political spectrum of the state.
Let’s say there’s a national scale for politics in America between 0 and 100 — 0 being the most conservative, 100 the most liberal. If you’re in South Carolina, where the politics is pretty conservative, the range probably goes between 0 and 70. As such, moderate Democrats in the state, who aim generally for the middle, will probably fall along the national spectrum at about 40, if the Dem is really lucky and the GOP campaign is a mess, maybe he or she can get away with being a 50. No matter what, candidates whose ideology would fall in the 90s just don’t stand a chance in South Carolina.
Then take Vermont, where the range is probably between 30 and 100. To be a “centrist” Democrat here, your ideology would fall around 65 or 70. In South Carolina, a 70 puts you on the fringes of statewide politics. In Vermont, you’re right in the middle.
So every time Dean talks about what a moderate governor of Vermont he was, he more or less has to hope that people don’t really appreciate where that puts him nationally.
With this in mind, it came as quite a surprise to see that Dean basically admitted all of this openly while campaigning in New Hampshire yesterday, acknowledging that the political center in Vermont is skewed left, making moderates there liberals elsewhere.
Dean was responding to a question from a Sierra Club member in Nashua who seemed disappointed that Dean had not been endorsed by the environmental group while serving as governor.
“Oh, in Vermont,” Dean answered. “Yeah, but in Vermont, you know, politics is much farther to the left. A Vermont centrist is an American liberal right now.”
Wrong answer, doc.
Part of being a disciplined candidate is staying on-message. The broader point of Dean’s campaign is that he was a successful, moderate governor who can win a general election as a centrist. As such, he shouldn’t be admitting — in front of reporters — that his moderate label is exaggerated and he should really be considered a liberal by everyone else.
This is just one more addition to Karl Rove’s clip file.