Interesting exchange from Meet the...

[The Ressurrected One]

...[De]Press[ed] yesterday.

Did you know that Howard Dean is a right-wing kook? Well, OK, he isn't really right-wing, but he has one surprising area of agreement with his fellow kooks on the right, as we learned when Tim Russert asked him about the race to replace Sen. Jim Jeffords:

Russert: In your home state of Vermont, there's a vacancy for the United States Senate about to occur. Bernie Sanders, the congressman from Vermont, wants to run for that seat. He is a self-described avowed socialist.

Dean: Well, that's what he says. He's really a populist.

Russert: But is there room in the Democratic Party for a socialist?

Dean: Well, first of all, he's not a socialist, really.

Russert: He--

Dean: He hasn't said that for a while.

Russert: Oh, he has a--he wrote in his book: "Outsider in the House, I am a Democratic socialist."

Dean: Well, a Democratic socialist--all right, we're talking about words here. And Bernie can call himself anything he wants. He is basically a liberal Democrat.

Sanders actually is not a Democrat; although he usually votes with the Dems, he is officially independent. But if, as Dean claims, a socialist "is basically a liberal Democrat," then a liberal Democrat is basically a socialist. Which, as we say, is something you'd expect to hear from a right-wing "kook," not the Democratic chairman.

Well? Does liberal Democrat = socialist as the DNC chair suggests? I think so.

[SPARKY]

Well that gives me an erection.