Dean and the flag

OTB thinks "Dean has a rather stereotypical view of the average Southerner. " Which may be true, but that is not how i read Dean's initial remarks about guys in pick-up trucks. While it is true that there is more to South than that, what Dean recognized was that the critical GWB swing voter in 2000 was a working class man or woman who voted for values (God, guns, gays) instead of their economic interest. (Remember, he carried West Virginia and needed that state to win).

While i am sure that Dean would accept the vote of the affluent banker in Charlotte or Atlanta, he knows that his best chance is with rural and suburban working class white guys. That's just smart politics.

This C. Dodd Harris post on Dean's backtracking is first rate:

But, of course, it's obvious that he doesn't mean that no-one - not even gays, minorities, atheists and gun-grabbers - should base their votes on those things. Just people with the "wrong" ideas about them. I will forbear to cite the Founders here and just say t we can now consider the debate about whether or not his comments over the weekend about the Confederate flag were just a gaffe or if they were indicative of a truly ignorant, bigoted notion of how Southerners think and act to be settled.