One-on-One with Howard Dean

“So I’m going to answer your question, but I want to preface it by saying most people do not vote on policies. They think they do, but they don’t. Even smart, educated people who think they do even more so don’t.”

Howard Dean, before his 2004 presidential campaign, served as the Governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003, as well as the chairman of the National Governors Association from 1994 to 1995. Governor Dean led the 2004 Democratic primary field at the outset, fueled in part by the support of many younger voters and success in the then-emergent area of online, grassroots campaign financing. He dropped out of the race in February of 2004 and endorsed John Kerry. Since then, Governor Dean has remained active in Democratic Party politics, including serving as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Since leaving that post in 2009, he has taught courses at Hofstra, Williams, and Yale. He joins Merion West‘s editor Erich Prince to share his thoughts on the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, the various ideas being put forward by the candidates, and to reflect on lessons learned from his own experiences running for president that may be relevant to candidates today.

I want to start off by talking about this debate or discussion within the Democratic Party between those candidates who have chosen to go on the Fox News town hall and those who haven’t. I know that Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Mayor Buttigieg, and Kirsten Gillibrand have already been on or agreed to appear on the network. Elizabeth Warren, I think she called it a “hate for-profit racket” and publicly said she doesn’t want to go on; what do you make about this difference of opinion about people who want to reach out to Fox News and those who don’t?

I mean there’s two arguments—one is that Fox does actually talk to people who don’t normally vote for us, so it’s not bad to have the exposure. The other is that Fox is, in fact, a hate channel and a propaganda outlet, not much different than Russia Today [RT], in terms of the things they say, many of which are not true. [And they] are reported as news. If I were running, I wouldn’t appear on Fox, but I don’t condemn other people for doing it, because there are legitimate reasons for doing it. It’s just that for me, legitimizing them as a news outlet is something that we don’t want to do. Because they’re not a news outlet; they’re a propaganda outlet.