Howard Dean: Sarah Palin could defeat President Obama in 2012

Warns it is dangerous for Democrats to dismiss her.
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There is at least one prominent Democrat who takes Gov. Palin seriously. Former DNC chairman Howard Dean, in an interview with The Hill, warns that Sarah Palin could defeat President Obama in 2012:

Dean says his fellow Democrats should beware of inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom that Obama would crush Palin in a general-election contest next year.

“I think she could win,” Dean told The Hill in an interview Friday. “She wouldn’t be my first choice if I were a Republican but I think she could win.”

Dean warns the sluggish economy could have more of a political impact than many Washington strategists and pundits assume.

“Any time you have a contest — particularly when unemployment is as high as it is — nobody gets a walkover,” Dean said. “Whoever the Republicans nominate, including people like Sarah Palin, whom the inside-the-Beltway crowd dismisses — my view is if you get the nomination of a major party, you can win the presidency, I don’t care what people write about you inside the Beltway,” Dean said.

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Dean served six terms as Vermont's governor, ran unsuccessfully for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, and chaired the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009. He is considered a trailblazer in using the internet to raise funds and organize at the grassroots level.

- JP

Howard Dean says Kelly Ayotte is 'extreme'

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Howard "The Scream" Dean, the former DNC chairman who "coulda been a contenda," apparently considers the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire to be an "extreme" one. We learn from the WSJ's Washington Wire that Dean is trying to use Gov. to raise funds from contributors to his PAC:

In an email Thursday to supporters of his political action committee, Mr. Dean declared: “I have been in politics for a long time now and I have never seen more extreme candidates than the ones being pushed today by Sarah Palin.”

The Wire says Dean specifically asked for funds in a lame attempt to defeat Palin-backed candidates for the U.S. Senate Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire and Joe Miller in Alaska.

Now, we realize that Joe Miller is a rock-ribbed conservative, and someone as far out on the fringes of the Democrat Party's left wing as is Dr. Dean would project their own extremism onto Miller. But Kelly Ayotte? Sure, she's a conservative, but she's pretty much in the mainstream of conservatism. Only from way out there on Planet Radicleft, where Dean's head makes its home, could she be considered an "extreme" candidate. Does the good doctor also think John McCain and Carly Fiorina are "extreme?"

Don't answer that last one. It's purely a rhetorical query, not an exit question.

- JP