Regardless of what happens at the party’s convention this week, Howard Dean said he has no doubt that Democrats will vote in high numbers this fall during the presidential election.
“Our task is not that hard. We just have to be decent,” said Dean, the former Vermont governor who nearly won the 2004 Democratic nomination for president, in an interview on “The Long Game,” a Yahoo News podcast.
As such, Dean said that the bar is fairly low for what presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, need to accomplish with the convention.
“All we have to do is be ourselves,” Dean said of the Democratic National Convention, which will be almost entirely streamed from locations outside of Milwaukee, the official host city, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Biden is a very, very decent human being. And I do think people are tired of the circus.
“Joe and Kamala have to be decent, they have to show that they’re capable, and they have to give reassurance to the Americans who were buffeted by, first of all COVID, and second of all, the unbelievable dishonesty and craziness of the Trump administration,” he said.
Dean said he did not worry about a dynamic in which most Biden voters are animated by a desire to get President Trump out of office rather than a passion for Biden himself.
“I think Americans have just had it,” Dean said. “It doesn’t matter how much enthusiasm there is for Biden, although I’m personally very enthusiastic of Biden.”
Polls this summer have consistently shown Biden leading Trump both nationally and in key battleground states. Monday’s Yahoo News/YouGov poll had the former vice president opening up an 11-point lead over his Republican opponent. It is Biden’s biggest lead to date.
Dean said that he thinks Trump’s comments about depriving the U.S. Postal Service of funding, in order to stop Americans from voting by mail, have backfired against the president. The Yahoo News/YouGov poll also showed 61 percent of Americans disapproving of Trump’s stand against providing additional funding to the USPS.
“Our guys are going to vote. We’re going to find a way to vote one way or another,” Dean said. “And if we have to vote with drop boxes, we will, if we have to show up at the polls, we will, and if we have to do it with the mail, we will.”
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