Democrats criticize Dean for comments

NASHUA, N.H. -- Howard Dean's rivals sought to undercut his front-running status Wednesday, criticizing the former Vermont governor's comments on the Confederate flag and his unwillingness to apologize.\n"Howard Dean offended both blacks and whites in the South by using the Confederate flag as a political symbol and should admit he was wrong," Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire, adding, "a leader has to be strong enough to admit a mistake."\nDean came under fire from his foes Tuesday night in a Democratic presidential debate that veered from hip to heated. The candidate refused to recant his recent statement that the party must court Southerners who display the symbol of the Confederacy in their pickup trucks.\n"It's a racist symbol but I also think the Democratic Party has to be a big tent," Dean said Tuesday night. "Poor white people need to vote their economic interest."\nThat's not how others saw it, not Sen. John Edwards nor Al Sharpton, both of whom sharply challenged Dean on the debate stage, nor even one prominent Democratic officeholder who has yet to endorse any of the contenders.\n"Governor Dean was trying to reach out to disenfranchised voters in the South, but he needs to be more careful," said Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico. "I don't think this is serious, but it has put a little bit of a dent in his front-runner status."\nDean's rivals can only hope so, with the kickoff Iowa caucus and New Hampshire presidential primary contests less than three months away and the former Vermont governor continuing to run strongly in polls in both states.\nAnd even as the debate was unfolding, there was fresh evidence of the difficulties Democrats face in the South as they prepare to challenge President Bush next year.\nIn off-year balloting hundreds of miles from the debate site, Republicans elected a governor in Kentucky for the first time in 32 years and ousted the incumbent Democratic governor in Mississippi.\nAnd dented or not, Dean already was moving on.\nIn remarks prepared for delivery on Wednesday in New York City, he was asking 600,000 supporters to decide whether he should drop out of the system of public financing for presidential elections and the campaign spending limits that go with it.\nIf so, he would be the first Democrat to do so since the post-Watergate spending system was created in the 1970s.\nRep. Dick Gephardt was the only absentee Tuesday night as the Democrats gathered for their sixth debate in two months. The Missouri lawmaker chose to campaign in Iowa, site of the leadoff caucuses on Jan. 19.\nWhatever the impact of the flap over the flag, the eight-way candidates' debate stood apart from the other clashes sanctioned by the Democratic Party in recent weeks. Hosted by CNN and Rock the Vote, it blended edgy videos produced by each of the campaigns to appeal to young voters with cheeky questions from members of the audience.\nAsked whether they had ever used marijuana, Edwards, Dean and Sen. John Kerry said they have. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Clark, Sharpton and Lieberman said they had not. Alone among the eight, former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun declined to answer.\nSekou Diyday, a 25-year-old supermarket buyer from Boston, triggered the clash over the Confederate flag question when he told Dean he was "extremely offended" by comments the former governor made in an interview with The Des Moines Register.\nDean responded by quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as saying he wanted to bring together the sons of slave holders and the sons of slaves. "And I think we need to talk to white Southern workers about how they vote, because when white people and black people and brown people vote together in this country, that's the only time that we make social progress."\nBut Sharpton and Edwards quickly dissented.\nSharpton said Dean had misquoted King. "You can't bring a Confederate flag to the table of brotherhood," he said. "You are no bigot, but you appear to be too arrogant to say, 'I'm wrong' and go on."\nEdwards was next to challenge Dean.\n"Were you wrong, Howard? Were you wrong to say that?"\n"No, I wasn't, John Edwards," he said.\nDean added that the flag is a racist symbol, "But I think there are lot of poor people who fly that flag because the Republicans have been dividing us by race since 1968 with their Southern race strategy. .... I want to go down to the South and talk to people who don't make any more than anybody else up North but keep voting Republican against their own economic interests."\nEdwards, who represents North Carolina, was unwilling to let the subject go.\n"Let me tell you, the last thing we need in the South is somebody like you coming down and telling us what we need to do"