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Who’s moved Dean’s cheese?
Posted at: Tuesday, February 17, 2004, 05:13 PM
If Howard Dean loses in Wisconsin today, will he take his cheese and go home?
Dean said he would quit if he lost in Wisconsin, then he said he wouldn’t. In any case, the doctor from Vermont appears to have lost patience.
He was getting downright gnarly — like old Limburger left in a pair of old tennis shoes in the trunk of an old Buick — as he scoured Wisconsin for votes on Monday.
Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times’ report:
“Let me remind you all that I have more delegates than everyone else in this race except John Kerry,” Dr. Dean told reporters, an edge of anger in his voice. “So I think the campaign obituaries that some of you have been writing are a little misplaced.”
If Dean’s wondering where all those misplaced obituaries went, all he needs to do is check late-night TV. Dean has been dead for weeks there. “Howard Dean finished in third — his lead lasted about as long as Britney Spears’ marriage,” Craig Kilborn cracked in January after the Iowa caucuses.
This is Jay Leno Monday night: “The latest trend in medicine is for doctors to try and save time by seeing patients in groups — you know what you call a doctor talking to three people at once? A Howard Dean campaign rally.”
“Dean says if he loses the Wisconsin primary, he’ll go back to Vermont and re-evaluate his campaign. Howard Dean is a doctor, so how come he can’t tell when something is dead?”
Of course, other candidates have been ripped by late night hosts (Leno compared Wesley Clark’s one for 14 record in the primaries to Shaquille O’Neal’s free-throw shooting), but it’s Dean who’s been the real sitting duck, especially since his so-called “I-have-a-scream” speech in Iowa.
Maybe he’ll shock the pundits, maybe he’ll take Wisconson, and maybe he’ll mount a comeback and beat Kerry and win the nomination and beat George Bush in November.
If not, back in Vermont while he’s reassessing and recharging, here’s some recommended reading for a man in career crisis: The self-help book “Who Moved My Cheese?”
—Jeffry Scott, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
