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Posted on 12/20/2003 6:56:16 AM PST by Bug
Randy Mayeux: Here is why we Deaniacs love our fellow
12:01 AM CST on Saturday, December 20, 2003
The Howard Dean campaign revolutionizing presidential politics isn't just a political entity. It is a social phenomenon.
I went to my first Dean "Meet-Up" ; a monthly Web-enabled gathering run by volunteers ; at the beginning of the summer. The mix and excitement of the people got me hooked. The crowd quickly outgrew two early locations, and additional Meet-Up spots now are added almost every month.
I was there when Mr. Dean took the stage in front of Dallas City Hall on July 13. More than 1,000 people gathered in the scorching July heat to hear this man speak about the dangerous path taken by the current administration. "We can do better than that," he told the crowd. I believed him.
How committed am I to Dean for President? Later, I joined a planeload of other Deaniacs campaigning door to door in Iowa.
No doubt about it, this feels more like a movement than a conventional campaign. How else to explain so many citizens - many of us true political novices giving so much time, money and energy to the presidential effort of a candidate who was on practically nobody's radar a year ago?
For one thing, we want no more of the Bush presidency. There is a palpable anger, partly flowing from a feeling of betrayal at being misled over Iraq. Anger at President Bush was the catalyst that started many on the Dean path. Mr. Dean is unafraid to speak from the heart about what Mr. Bush has done to America. He has conviction.
For another, there is a true populist sensibility at work here. We, the people, want someone to hear us. Mr. Dean and his "official" staff actually listen to the grass roots.
Much has been written about the Dean campaign's Web log (www.blogforamerica.com). The blog has enabled a vast conversation among Dean people. Campaign manager Joe Trippi and other top staffers regularly write on it and read many of the comments left by supporters. Those who comment get to know each other by name and even travel in order to meet each other.
As Mr. Dean says, this campaign is in the process of creating community for a community-starved nation. One thing about us Dean backers: We don't go bowling or campaigning alone.
Look at the way Mr. Dean has raised campaign cash. Before Mr. Dean, people who could give only $10 or $20 felt invisible and insignificant in the face of the usual crowd of big-money donors.
No longer. Spend 10 minutes reading comments on the Dean blog, especially when the bats are up (the bats are the visual cues that document the progress of a Dean fund-raising challenge), and you will realize that Dean folks giving their "small" gifts feel a part of
something great. And because they are treated like they matter, they are part of something great.
We want to be part of a "we." With Dean folks, it isn't "he" (Mr. Dean) or "me" (the individual voter) but "we" all of us together. Mr. Dean knows there is power in unity. When he says, "We can do better than that," it isn't just empty rhetoric. He is talking to me and all who believe in him.
You ought to listen to what the Dean community says about our candidate when we get together. One Deaniac recently told me, "It is nice to have a candidate I can be enthusiastic about instead of holding my nose and voting for." Another said, "He is the only politician who ever has motivated me." And still another: "We aren't afraid to make fools of ourselves for our candidate. And we love that!"
As I said, it is a phenomenon! Who would want to miss out on being a part of something like that?
Randy Mayeux is a Dallas minister and speaker. His e-mail address is r.mayeux@airmail.net.
And you're doing a darn good job of it!
Feel or feels appears 3 times in this article. Think stayed home.
Sunday, November 23
* We will celebrate a Muslim-Christian Interfaith Worship Service of Thanksgiving with Dr. Hind Jarrah as our Muslim worship leader and Isabel N. Docampo as our Christian worship leader.
* Jaime and Thad Clark-Soles will be our child care volunteers
* Charles Darwin and Anna Lou Brown have volunteered to put up the CityChurch signs.
And there is the difference between conservatives and liberals.
Liberals feel, then act.
Conservatives also feel, but they THINK before they act.
Bullshyt! These folks have been spittle-spewing, rabid Bush haters since FL 2000.
Yep it is basically 68 all over again for the dems, with Dean taking the Eugene McCarthy role. The difference today is that there isn't a Humphrey or Bobby Kennedy, to challenge him as a "more reasonable candidate"(although both of them were lefties, but there was no talk radio or internet to point out that they were leftists). The demos have moved so far left that all their candidates are whacko leftists.
"This is the second essential basis for coming to a right understanding of homosexuals. If I can say God made me as I am, a heterosexual, then homosexuals can say God made them as they are. If God made them that way, that way is good. If I am created in the image of God, homosexuals are created in the image of God. And if God has a purpose for every life, the lives of homosexuals have a God-given purpose. Then refusing to accept and affirm them in the same way we affirm others would be trying to thwart the purposes of God. Can we draw any other conclusion?"
* * * * *
Somehow, I just knew this letter (or something akin to it) would be there.
The emotion in Dean's campaign is not unlike that felt by the Perot's people in 1992. Ideology driven campaigns have the same characteristics..."us against the establishment"..."corruption is rampant"..."only we can make the government work"..."the people must take our government back" (from whom, I ask?).
Having had this happen to them in the not to distant past, the Bushies are well-versed in how to compete with the Deanies.
The only question will be, when will the Deanies come to understand (as the Perotistas eventually did) that the more popular Dean's candidacy becomes, the further out of the mainstream it is?
Do they serve Kool Aid at these gatherings?
A Christian Church that conducts interfaith services with Muslims, embraces sexual dysfunction and perversion as God-made "goods" (bisexuals, pedophiles, and bestials will be so happy), and has Charles Darwin as a member is TRULY a "progressive" church.
Rev. Mayeaux senses a "movement" in the works. I would have to agree. The peristalsis of progressive politics as embodied by the Dean campaign is truly a wonder to behold.
Kumbaya.
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