Stiff upper blog
: You can practically hear the tears plonking on Zephyr Teachout’s keyboard as she blogs at Dean’s place:
Keep fighting — its a struggle to change the country — on to New Hampshire
We won’t know for some time what the results are — we’ll let you know as soon as we know — but for now it looks like Dean will finish in the top three, but not first. Those of you who have been here have seen the remarkable energy that Dean has inspired — and that you have inspired — by standing up to the special interests and the deeply corrupt system of politics.
Deeply corrupt system of politics? Otherwise known as the people voting, the people voting against Howard Dean. Corrupt? Quite the contrary.
You’ve also seen something else — a complete, desperate, onslaught on Dean and you to do everything they can to stop you. Those of you who’ve lived in Iowa have seen and heard negative spin about Dean regularly — nitpicking, angry-calling, a sense that the others have joined forces to resist the change that you are serious about making happen.
Paranoia, the hallmark of the loser.
You’ve seen other candidates effectively move here, throwing everything at a single state campaign to stop you while you’ve continued to build a national campaign. Its painful that it has an effect, but it does have an effect — there are so many people who have been inspired by the stormers, and by you, and by Dean, but so many others who have never had a chance to really understand the enormity of what you are trying to do….
By every account I’ve read, Dean has the best organization in Iowa. It wasn’t organization that lost this for Dean or won it for the others. It was the voters’ honest opinions.
Without you, Dean’s campaign is just a strong, courageous man willing to tell the truth and try to change politics, and he could not have made it this far. With you, Dean’s campaign is a seachange in politics that we will have to fight for with everything we have — but we are too deep, to strong, too optimistic and too determined to change the world. We will not stop. What happened this last month in Iowa, the angry flood of negative advertising, the strong push of the politics of the past, is just more reason to keep fighting. Thank you.
Posted by Zephyr Teachout at 08:58 PM
Cue the violins. Cut to sunset. Break out tissues.
I’m sorry to be snide but the nya-nya brattiness of the Deaniacs brings it out. It’s hard not to nya-nya back and rub their noses in the honesty of democracy. The voters spoke, folks. Old-time politics didn’t. Nastiness didn’t (and who’s nastier than Dean?). Voters spoke. Time to listen.
Democracy is the true interactivity.
: Some of the comments are even sadder:
The movement never wins the election :( …
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go…
(Theodore Roethke)
A poet that Howard Dean reads. Dean, the poets’ president. …
I would like to make a joke about voters committing Hairy Kerry, but I don’t feel up to it….
RELAX!!!! It’s OK! Losing Iowa is not the end of the world, and it certainly wasn’t lost for lack of passion and effort and heart for those of us for Dean. Maybe what we can learn from this is that politics is more complicated than numbers of doors knocked on, leaflets given out, and visibility sights hit….
I am sad…
These are the times that try mens souls.
We must keep our heads up and learn from our mistakes….
Lennon had it right:
Money can’t buy you love….
