Howard Dean: "This Is Ridiculous. We're 60 Years Behind the Times" on Fixing Health Care

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on July 8, 2009, Printed on July 8, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141129/

During the 2004 presidential primaries, the conventional wisdom among Howard Dean's energized supporters was that the over-the-top conservative attacks on the Vermont governor reflected the degree to which the right feared his nomination. With his blunt, plainspoken populism, the argument went at the time, Dean represented a threat to the Bush administration's prospects for re-election that his more polished Democratic opponents lacked.

Five years later, and it may be the "disease care" industry -- now spending $1.4 million each and every day to lobby lawmakers against implementing significant health reforms -- that may be sweating Dean's simple, but uncompromising, brand of politics.