For supporting mild Medicare spending restraint, for stating the obvious need to modernize Medicare's outdated bureaucracy and for broaching the topic of raising the Social Security retirement age -- all of which he did in the 1990s -- Dean is now attacked as a traitor. All of these positions were eminently sensible, meant to make liberalism's programmatic crown jewels sustainable. The attacks on Dean only demonstrate the Democratic Party's calculated aversion to rationality on entitlements.
Dean has many legitimate vulnerabilities. His cut-and-run Iraq policy would be disastrous for America's position in the world. But the rest of the Democratic candidates -- except for Joe Lieberman -- are too busy aping Dean on Iraq to attack him for it. His position on trade -- making trading partners meet U.S. standards for labor and environmental protections -- is de facto protectionism. And he wants to repeal all of the Bush tax cuts, even those that benefit the middle class.
At least John Kerry has hit him on trade and taxes. But the hardest shots against Dean in the debates are on Medicare and Social Security, because the Democrats have such a well-developed instinct for demagoguery on these issues. Straight-shooter Dean has had to disavow his prior entitlement truth-telling and say he never condoned cutting Medicare and would never raise the Social Security retirement age. Of course not. Whom do you think he is -- Newt Gingrich?
So it goes in the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.