I'm seeing a lot of "And Howard Dean got pushed out because he yelled weird one time" commentary.

And, you know, I say that too a lot, because it IS funny, but also, let's be real — he was the anti-war candidate, he was going to be blitzed on SOMETHING, it didn't matter what.

The left was anti-war, but regular Democrats were scared shitless of anyone saying they were unpatriotic. So they wanted Kerry, a generally inoffensive veteran, because they thought he would be immune to criticism.

That ... did not turn out to be the case.

For the record, I absolutely think Dean would have beaten Bush.

In a primary, Republicans vote for who they want and Democrats vote for who they think Republicans might be *willing* to vote for if the GOP "goes too far." Obama, I would say, was the exception to this rule, I think because people were too burnt to care what Republicans wanted.