please keep reading that there SOTU post (two down). but also look at this! i'm going to reprint an entire message from alyssa, because it's just that cool. and important. (go laurel!) please comment?

-----Original Message-----
From: alyssa
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 2:03 PM
To:
Cc:
Subject: the new fate of swatties

last two paragraphs from the Weekly's Dean cover story:

Still, Dean has something none of the other candidates can claim: People
don't just vote for him--they believe in him. They get on buses and drive
a thousand miles to knock on doors in the snow. And they do it with a
smile. Which is something even a king's ransom worth of TV ads can't buy
and the dirtiest Republican tricks can't change. Laurel Eckhouse says as
much as we file out into the frigid Iowa night.

"This is bad for the Democratic Party. This could have been a chance for
unity," she says. "Dean bypassed the party gatekeepers, built his own
movement and came up with his own paradigm--and it's brilliant. And that
scares the shit out of them. His issues should be the heart and soul of
the Democratic Party: government of the people, by the people and for the
people. Instead we get government of the corporations, by the corporations
and for the corporations. No matter what, if he doesn't win the
nomination, in four or eight years, people are going to look back and say
Howard Dean was ahead of his time."

*****

i think this is remarkable. i think it's remarkable that my buddy l.r.e.
had the best and brightest insight of the philly4dean adventure and so
scored the conclusion of the Philly Weekly's cover story. la[urel], you did the
journalist's work for him. perhaps this is the fate of swatties: to have
the kind of understanding that sits at the poignant end of a news article.

what does that mean?

to begin with, it means that if we want people to be smarter and more
thoughtful than we already are, we're not going to find it in 95% of the
media. maybe we already knew this. it also means that we should WORK THE
NEWSPAPERS.