The Dean of Hazzard

Howard Dean is a straight-talkin' man. \nIn an interview earlier this month with the Des Moines Register, Democratic presidential candidate Dean straight-talked just a little too much.\n"I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," Dean told the paper.\nAs soon as the former Vermont governor's remarks became public, the other Democrats running for president started criticizing him for the insensitivity of his remarks.\n"It is simply unconscionable for Howard Dean to embrace the most racially divisive symbol in America," Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said. Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman called the Confederate flag "one of the most divisive, hurtful symbols in American history."\nThe other candidates said about the same thing.\nIt's good to know that few Democrats embrace the Confederate flag these days.\nBut it's troubling that none of them have spoken about the substance of Dean's remarks.\n"The only way we're going to beat George Bush is if southern white working families and African-American working families come together under the Democratic tent," Dean told The Washington Post.\nDean's unfortunate word choice obscured that message.\nSomehow, the Democrats fee the Republican Party has convinced poor, rural white voters that its package of tax cuts for the wealthy and spending cuts for social services are in their interests. \nThe GOP showed the power of this message in this month's elections, when the party defeated Democrats for the governorships of Mississippi and Kentucky.\nDean knows if Democrats are going to beat Bush, they have to break the Republican hold on the South. And the only way to do that is to break the Republican alliance that runs largely on racial lines.\nDean thinks the best way to do that is to launch a class war, linking the fortunes of the working and poor classes across the country. In political terms, he's probably right.\nOf course, Dean is in some ways the archetypal rich white Yankee. His clumsy overture to southern whites is the wrong way to go about broadening the Democratic base.\nWhile Dean's tactics are flawed, his strategy is right. And the Democratic field's rejection of his strategy foreshadows a repeat of 2000, when Al Gore lost every state in the South including his home state of Tennessee. Had Gore won even one state in Dixie, he would be president today.\nDean knows that ... and so does Bush.\nBut it looks like the other Democrats have forgotten.