In Search Of The Left-Wing Freak Show

Bob Baker has a great column in this morning's LA Times regarding the Club for Growth's ad campaign aimed at Howard Dean (see Conason, three posts down):

So could there actually be such a person?

I hit the phones and reached Pam Mueller, a recent college grad who's working in Dean's Falls Church, Va., office. She had no piercings but confessed to having an occasional latte, likes sushi, reads the New York Times, admits to the label of left-winger — and owns a Volvo. ("Only because I won it," she protested. "On 'Jeopardy.' ")

She transferred me to an office mate, Don Beyer, a 53-year-old car dealer who sells Volvos. ("But I drive a Subaru.") Unfortunately, Beyer doesn't drink coffee, eats sushi only under pressure and calls himself a "Southern moderate." ("My father was a founding member of NASCAR.")

Thus began a string of largely unsatisfying conversations with Dean volunteers in Los Angeles, Iowa and Wisconsin. It wasn't hard to get them to express support for raising taxes (although they insist Dean would merely roll back President Bush's tax cut) or bigger government (for schools and infrastructure, some insisted). But too many lacked the qualities that make the anti-Dean ad so compelling. Either they weren't Hollywood-loving ("I like independent films," several insisted) or they weren't pierced or they didn't like sushi. "I like sashimi, I don't like seaweed," noted Diana Cotter (two of nine stereotypes), a retired teacher from Pasadena who paid her way to Iowa to work for Dean and had just seen the ad on TV. A Madison, Wis., coffee shop owner, Lindsey Lee (three of nine) proudly offered a line from regional song: "If you think sushi looks a lot like bait/ You're hopelessly Midwestern."

In all, based on an unscientific sample of a dozen Dean volunteers, the average volunteer conforms to 4.3 of the nine stereotypes laid down by the ad.

The closest to perfection I got was a 28-year-old mother of two from Monrovia named Kimmy Cash who last year, bitter at the war in Iraq, started a website called punxfordean.org. It's aimed at disaffected young people and, by Cash's count, has enlisted 13,000 Dean volunteers nationwide and registered 6,000 new voters.

I nearly swooned as I ticked off the Club for Growth criteria and heard nothing from Cash but "Yes…. Yes…. Yep…." (Piercings: "I have four on my nose, one in my tongue, one in my nipple and three that used to be on my lip." Hollywood-loving? "I'm from L.A.!" Left-wing? "Totally.")

Cash fit eight stereotypes. Then came the car problem. "I wish," she laughed when I popped the Volvo question. She drives a '62 Ford Falcon. That's life when your business is selling vintage merchandise on EBay.

Memo to Club for Growth: Buy this woman a Volvo and make her Public Enemy No. 1. Take it from me, you'll never come this close again.