Howard Dean will end his campaign for the presidential nomination and oversee a new effort to keep his issues alive and his supporters organized on behalf of Democratic causes, two party officials said Wednesday."I topple my king."
Dean was to announce his plans at a news conference Wednesday afternoon, said the officials. The sources said the shape of the new effort is still to be determined but that Dean would eventually support the Democratic Party’s nominee. One official said Dean would help elect Democrats to Congress in the fall. Dean was mulling whether to endorse one of his rivals. John Edwards has been reaching out to Dean for several weeks, and the former Vermont governor has been impressed with the North Carolina senator and grateful that he has not criticized Dean. Still, the officials cautioned, the chance for endorsement remained slim. Dean exits the active race certain in the knowledge that he will live on in the annals of U.S. politics for shattering Democratic fund-raising records with $41 million collected in a single year — as well as on late-night television and Internet parodies for a high-octane concession speech on the night of the Iowa caucuses that he’s likely never to live down.
"AAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The former Vermont governor is the political equivalent of a supernova. Once a long-shot candidate, the Internet phenomenon filled his campaign coffers and attracted thousands of supporters through the spring and summer, pushing him to the head of the crowded Democratic field. The leader in national polls — and more important state polls in the first states of Iowa and New Hampshire — Dean seemed poised to win the nomination in a runaway. In the end, he never won a single state through 17 contests.
"ARGH!"
Historians will judge, but Dean and his devoted supporters are convinced that they more than anyone else defined the Democratic debate through his unwavering criticism of President Bush, the Iraq war and Democrats who helped Bush push his agenda through Congress. "Because of your work, we have already written the Democratic Party platform," Dean declared Monday night at an exuberant Madison rally that harkened to the heady days when he was more focused on a running mate than exiting the race.
| "It's all vowels, and there are some umlauts, but we wrote it!" |
"AAARRRGGGHHH!"
Dean was the most unlikely of heroes for this movement of liberals, disaffected voters and youth. Born to wealth on New York’s Park Avenue, his Yale pedigree was much closer to Bush’s than the working people to whom he said he was giving voice.
"AARRGGHH! I sez i refersented the foor and my LIFS FELL OFF!"
As he left the Vermont governor’s office in January 2003 after nearly 12 years, Dean had a presidential campaign staff of a half-dozen and about $157,000 in the bank. But one of those staffers had found a then-obscure Internet organizing site, known as MeetUp.com. Dean became the first political candidate to sign up for it and suddenly thousands of people were finding him, organizing local events and fund-raisers and slowly making him a force. His blunt speaking style and full-throated opposition to the Iraq war at a time when almost all of the other major contenders were trying to explain their support for it gave him an edge. Even then he was still little more than an afterthought, but he had raised enough money to begin competing and was relentless in appearing everywhere he could. By February last year, he had begun focusing his criticism not just on Bush but on his fellow Democrats, accusing them of being too timid in fighting for the party’s core principles.
Which are infanticide, perversion, and submission to the UN.