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# Posted 7:34 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

HOW COULD I NOT LINK TO THAT? Substantive analysis is what makes Kevin Drum's blog great. But my black little heart is also warmed by his unflinching ability to expose the stupidity to his immediate left, even though he is a liberal.

Adding insult to injury, Kevin doesn't just slash up the latest pronouncement from Howard Dean [subscribers only]. No, instead Kevin approvingly quoted the commentary of conservative blogger Tom Bevan (whom I also like very much):

[Dean] begins with this: "We need a Democratic Congress to fight the war on terror — and to end the war on America's families." But if you were looking for an explanation in the 1,056 words that followed as to why we need a Democratic Congress to fight the war on terror, you came away disappointed — because Dean never really offered one.

Instead, he launched into a litany of detailed complaints against the Bush economy (falling incomes, stagnant wages, rising heathcare costs, and falling retirement coverage) led off by a muted but obvious piece of populist class warfare right out of Bob Shrum's faded playbook: "An economy that favors the top 1% at the expense of everyone else might be good for President Bush's politics, but a shrinking middle class is bad for capitalism, democracy and America."

Kevin adds to that:

Snark aside, this is sadly accurate. Dean's piece is here, and it contains only one short, fuzzy paragraph about national security at the very end. Essentially, he just ignored the whole issue. That's very, very dumb.

I agree, but what's dumb and what isn't will probably be judged by what happens on election day. And even this kind of dumbness may not prevent a major Democratic in '06. But '08 is a very different story.

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