Salon has nothing personal against Dean. But we felt that a liberal champion's reliance on paid advocacy work reveals something significant about our political culture, and possibly about Dean himself. Finney’s statement is presented here in its entirety, along with my responses.

While there may be fair criticisms to be made, its a sham that Justin knowingly ignored a number of relevant facts because they didn't fit the premise of the story he wanted to write. Criticism of one’s positions or activities is one thing, lazy journalism is quite another.

On the issue of biologics, one that he’s known and had an opinion on long before he was DNC Chairman. For example, Justin did not mention Gov. Dean spent most of his time during the healthcare debate working with DFA and other grassroots organizations advocating for the public option as one of the most outspoken advocates. During that debate he was very transparent about his position on and support for biologics legislation sponsored by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) in the House (H.R. 1548) and in The Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act introduced by Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.).

Here’s the rest of what he said at the time about a commonsense and fair approach:

"A commonsense and fair approach, similar to the process and timeline currently in place for generic versions of chemical-based medicines, would allow the original developer of the biologic to protect the proprietary data used to develop the medicine for at least 12 years. A shorter exclusivity period would prematurely rob biotech innovators of their intellectual property and destroy incentives to develop new cures. Most firms would be unable to recoup their investments in new medicines, which ordinarily top $1 billion and involve 15 years of research and development. If we discourage investment, we jeopardize the development of the next generation of breakthrough medicines and cures."

On the issue of the MEK, he is not a paid advocate. He was paid for a handful of speeches, but has not been paid for his advocacy. His focus has been on the human rights issues. In an op-ed on Huffington Post he outlined some of the facts he felt had been ignored in recent articles, but his key point is that there are 3400 unarmed men, women and children currently in Camp Ashraf who should not be left for slaughter after having been promised they would be protected. Here’s an excerpt:

"There are key facts, which have been obscured, omitted or ignored in recent articles written about these 3,400 unarmed people. First, a lot has changed since the MEK was classified as a terrorist organization in 1997. In recent testimony to Congress by Martin Indyk, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs under Clinton, it was revealed that the motivation behind the '97 classification was to help open a dialogue with the ruling party of Iran.

Second, in July 2010, the U.S. Appeals Court in Washington DC ruled that the group was actually not given due process in 1997 and ordered the State Dept. to reevaluate the terrorist designation. Notably the governments of France, Britain and the EU have already ruled that the MEK is not a terrorist organization. Currently the only two nations that remain in agreement on what is now a discredited classification are America and Iran.

Third, in 2003 the U.S. military peacefully disarmed the inhabitants of Camp Ashraf. American FBI agents visited Ashraf and questioned all of the 3,400 residents. None were found to be associated with terrorists or terrorism. The US military made a promise in writing that each resident would be protected against outside threats.

Fourth, in 2009, and again in 2011, American troops were ordered to leave the vicinity of Ashraf by the Iraqi Government -- then led by Prime Minister Maliki. Iraqi troops went into Ashraf and killed 47 unarmed civilians in cold blood. Most of the hundreds who were wounded were denied medical care as American troops stood idly by just a few miles away.

Fifth, while the residents of Ashraf are currently asking to be re-located to other countries, the plan currently being pushed by Lawrence Butler from the US State would instead relocate them to another area in Iraq and "guarantee" their safety. Yet neither the American or Iraqi governments have thus far kept their word to the residents of Ashraf.

"America gave its word to the MEK that we would protect them. We believe that allowing 3,400 people to be murdered in cold blood and breaking that promise is wrong. We believe that in the end this debate is about America, not the people in Ashraf. America is a country that values freedom and the rule of law. We must keep our word and help the people of Ashraf get out of Iraq. We must support those who peacefully and through democratic means fight for their freedom. If we fail and again stand by as 3,400 unarmed men, women and children, in Ashraf are murdered by the Iranian Government or its Iraqi proxies, we diminish ourselves as a great nation. Its time for America to keep its word to the people in Ashraf."

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Dean may not be the worst of the "buckrakers," those prototypical capital characters who exploit their name and connections without regard for principle. But his recent political forays seem to have diverged from his trailblazing left-liberal past.

As senior strategic advisor at McKenna Long & Aldridge, a heavyweight Washington lobbying firm, Dean played a prominent role representing the biotech industry during the healthcare bill debate, staking out a position on biopharmaceutical drugs that was decried by consumer groups.

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First, Simon lays out the history: Reagan and Clinton were only reelected because they did not face serious primary challenges. But Jesse Jackson almost ran against Clinton, and he would've made Clinton lose, because of Whitewater, NAFTA and Troopergate. Thankfully, Rahm Emanuel and Harold Ickes made Jackson not run, thus saving Clinton from being Jimmy Carter.

But will Howard Dean seriously be Obama's Ted Kennedy? The Speculative 2012 Primary Challenge Column Hat does not lie. Howard Dean is going to run against Obama and lose to the Palin/O'Donnell ticket. Simon proves this with facts:

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But whatever they hoped to accomplish, one thing is indisputable: Reid and Dean both did an enormous favor to the right-wing fear-mongers who have been pushing the "ground zero mosque" hysteria, equipping them with a compelling talking point for the cable news circuit. Here's a sampling of how Reid and Dean have been invoked in the past few days, often (but not always) on Fox News:

Rick Santorum ("On the Record With Greta Van Susteren," Aug. 23):

I suspect Howard Dean and others have been saying this to the Obama administration for quite some time that the arrogance and the dismissiveness of the American public's opinion on a whole variety of things, including this one, is starting to corrode not just support for him but for the Democratic Party generally and is hurting candidates across this country.

And that's why you see Harry Reid stepping out and saying what he said. They are walking away from him because he doesn't seem to care what America thinks, and that is not good news for Democratic candidates across the country. 

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Heroes

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Here's Kurtz's rundown of recent "crossfire" examples:

In just the last few weeks, Salon Editor in Chief Joan Walsh and CNBC contributor Howard Dean have accused Fox News of racism; conservative crusader Andrew Breitbart has delighted in pushing a maliciously edited video smearing Shirley Sherrod and refused to apologize; Fox hosts have denounced mainstream organizations as Obama lap dogs for downplaying a case involving the New Black Panther Party; e-mails from an off-the-record discussion group showed one liberal pundit wishing for Rush Limbaugh's death and another suggesting that conservatives such as Fred Barnes be tarred as racist; Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings was accused of betraying journalistic ethics with the story that torpedoed Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and Hastings's critics were ripped as lackeys of the military establishment.

It's journalism as blood sport, performed for the masses.

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It's too bad, because I think we could have had a good discussion otherwise (and Matthews and I did better in the second hour of the show.) The experience was a perfect case study of how Breitbart and the right wing noise machine manage to hijack the debate over race and politics in this country, even when they're wrong.

First, let me make one thing clear: According to Media Matters, and you all know they pay attention, Matthews was right about the first video posted by Breitbart. It did include Sherrod alluding to the epiphany she describes in detail later, about the fact that many issues aren't about black and white, they're about the haves and have nots. There are also versions of the video that don't include that quote. I had seen both versions; Dean had only seen those that didn't have the short allusion to her epiphany about the importance of "have nots" cooperating around economic issues.

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But that's not how Howard Dean sees it. The former Democratic National Committee chairman told Salon this afternoon that he doesn't want to see a new majority leader  -- even though it was in the Senate that the public option Dean aggressively championed died earlier this year.

"Harry did everything he could to deliver a good healthcare bill," Dean said. "I do not blame Harry at all for the weakness of the healthcare bill."

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"I think what you're going to see in the fall is not so much an anti-Democratic vote, I think you're going to see an anti-incumbent vote, and I think that's going to include Republicans," Dean said in an interview with Salon on Wednesday.

"There are two good signs for the Democrats: One is all this blowup happened 10 months before the election, not 10 weeks before the election. Two, the average American believes that better times are ahead. Those are two important indicators. Now, there are plenty of indicators that aren't so good, but I think a month is a huge lifetime in politics, so I think we're actually going to do a bit better than people are predicting."

One of the reasons Dean sees for hope has to do with the issue he's been most associated with over the past year, healthcare reform. The former DNC chair hasn't been wild about the way Democrats have gone about passing a bill so far, or about the legislation itself, but he's encouraged by what's been happening in recent days.

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No less a figure than Dr. Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chairman, wrote that, were he a senator, "I would not vote for the current healthcare bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over healthcare and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real healthcare reform."

Dean's reservations have been widely echoed on the left. The healthcare bill's big winners, they complain, are the insurance industry, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and doctors. Because it lacks both the "public option" (a government-run insurance company competing with private ones to drive down costs) and the Medicare buy-in that was initially highly touted, then quickly shot down by Holy Joe Lieberman, some Democrats fear that the party is both providing inadequate coverage and setting itself up for a voter backlash.

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In an interview with Salon late Thursday, however, Dean insisted that he would support a version of the current legislation, with certain changes, and that he had "never said" he would only back a bill that included a public option. "We're not going to get reform," he said, meaning what he regards as true reform, which would have to include a public option or an expansion of Medicare. "The question is, can we get a bill that does some good instead of more harm than good. And in order to do that, the protectionist legislation for the insurance companies that is in there now needs to be stripped out entirely."

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If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these...

Then, around some suggested changes, he gets to the politics of its passage or rejection:

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"This is what should have been done in the first place," former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said on CBS News Wednesday morning. He also called the deal "real reform." (Video below, with a hat-tip to Political Wire.)

Not everyone's been swayed, though. Two of the liberal blogosphere's biggest names, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos fame and Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher, are both disappointed with the deal, and with Democrats trying to play it up for donations.

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Jacob Hacker, a professor of political science at Yale and fellow at the New America Foundation, is widely credited with coming up with the idea for a public option. Salon spoke with him by phone last week about why he feels it's necessary for healthcare reform and how he thinks Democrats have been doing at making the case for reform generally.

Why a public option?

I think it's pretty clear why if you look at what's happened over the last generation in American health insurance. Private insurance plans have basically failed us, and we need to have competition between a new nonprofit public health insurance plan that puts patients first and not private insurance companies.

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The announcement is especially interesting given the context provided recently by the fire the network has taken from "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, and the approving reaction Stewart's criticisms have gotten from the kind of people who make up Dean's base. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports CNBC's decision to bring Dean on was coincidental and unrelated, though. Stein quotes an unnamed source "close to the former Vermont governor" as saying, "This was in the works long before the Jon Stewart stuff."

Dean has some background in financial matters -- he did some time as a stock broker before going to medical school, and his father worked in finance.

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Of course, nothing's quite that simple, especially when the competing egos of Dean and his longtime rival, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, are in play. In this case, the former Vermont governor's friends believe, Dean's name is coming up because the administration is trying to rid itself of some of the heat it took for passing him over before.

"The White House knows Dean indicated he was not interested last December, so it seems odd that they are floating his name," one anonymous ally told the Huffington Post's Sam Stein. "I question the timing given that they have been getting criticism for how he's been treated."

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Greg Sargent reports, however, that he's hearing from Dean allies that the former Vermont governor doesn't want the post. "It's not a good fit for him," one told Sargent.

That's in contrast to the job of Health and Human Services secretary, which Dean did want. His friends and allies have been perturbed by the lack of consideration Dean has gotten for Cabinet posts like HHS from the Obama administration and by other perceived slights.

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As noted in this space yesterday, the outgoing chair wasn't at the event because of a scheduling commitment -- specifically, he was working in American Samoa. But Dean insiders are angry; they see the timing as a snub. Martin quotes one as saying, "The snub today was no accident. I guarantee you he would have rescheduled his trip if asked to attend. It’s easy to [screw] over people when you are riding high in the polls, let's see how many people are singing his praises in six months."

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Responding to the news that Senate Democrats voted 42-13 to allow Lieberman to keep his position as Homeland Security chairman, Dean told Greg Sargent of TPMElection Central that he's "fine" with the outcome, saying that the senators only did what President-elect Barack Obama wanted them to.

Obama "called the shots, and that's fine," Dean said, adding that the vote to support Lieberman came from "the spirit of unification, which is what the President-elect wanted... It's pretty hard to run the country based on, 'We're all working together,' if your first act is to strip someone who was your political enemy...of power."

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When Dean leaves early next year -- he's not seeking a second term -- whoever takes over will probably have it easier. The Democrats now have comfortable majorities in the House and Senate. Dean's "50-state" strategy was essentially vindicated during the presidential election, with Barack Obama investing heavily in, and winning, states such as Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado, which all went Republican in previous cycles. And, of course, a Democrat is moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in a few weeks.

If things had gone the way Dean wanted them to go four years ago, he'd be preparing for his second term as president, not leaving the DNC and waiting to hear if he's getting a Cabinet job. But Democratic insiders say he played a big part in the party's rejuvenation, which came about much faster than anyone would have imagined back in the winter of 2004.

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