Another one of the main issues that Dean is running on is a more comprehensive health care plan for the country. He is promoting the expansion of Medicaid and the Sate Children’s Health Insurance Program. These two programs would give some basic health insurance to every child under the age of twenty-five if they meet certain criteria. The Doctor is also pushing for extension of coverage to small businesses. He is proposing a system that is modeled after the federal employee health system. Dean wants to implement a system that allows for cheaper insurance premiums for companies that employ fewer than fifty people. The federal government will pick up the tab for some of the expense while expecting companies participating in this program to also provide funding. Dean also pledges in his plan to make corporations more responsive to health care needs of their employees. His plan to pay for all of this coverage is to repeal the majority of the tax cuts of the Bush Administration. According to his website, the cost of these programs would be approximately 88.3 billion dollars which is less than half of the tax cuts that were passed (DeanforAmerica.com).

But the message conveyed by the campaign was, he was simply listening to the will of the people which is what politicians in a representative government should do. This strategy enabled him to avoid too much negative criticism, and he was further relieved of stress when Kerry also opted out of public funding for similar reasons, to fight the overflowing Bush war chest.

During the Democratic Presidential Debate in Detroit, Dr. Dean was put on the defensive by Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich attacked Dean’s ad that talked about the other candidates supporting the war. Dean was backed into a corner and responded that the ad was only meant to address those members of congress that had voted for the resolution authorizing the war. Kucinich swiped back at Dean calling the ad a misrepresentation of the truth (Transcript: Democratic Presidential Debate in Detroit). After he was confronted by Kucinich, Dean was cornered by Sen. Kerry on the issue of Medicaid and plans to balance the budget. Dean seemed to have misspoken and left the door open to Kerry. He attacked the misstep stating “Gov. Dean said that entitlements were off of the table. Now if he just took Social Security and Medicare off of the table, the question is what entitlements. Are on the Table? Veterans’ pensions, food stamps, Medicaid, Social—disability? He can’t answer that question” (Transcript: Democratic Presidential Debate in Detroit). The moderator in the debate acknowledged the fact that Dean was taking a beating and gave him the opportunity to be the first to speak in the final round of questioning.

Dean’s opposition to our current handling of the situation in Iraq stems from the fact that he is strongly opposed to unilateral military operations, since it appears that Saddam Hussein did not possess the imminent threat that the Bush Administration attempted to sell to the American public. Dean’s strategy on this issue is to play up the fact that the people in Washington acted in a rash manner playing on the public fear of terrorism after September 11. Dr Dean would prescribe a different medicine for this problem. He would work together with other world leaders to reach a healthy diagnosis of the ‘Saddam problem.’

Due to the heavy frontloading of the primary schedule most of the democrats will be completely unable to spend money after the primaries have produced a candidate, due to the 45 million dollar cap. This will allow the Bush campaign to launch an overwhelming assault on the democrats since he is facing no one in the primaries and only has to focus his efforts on fundraising versus campaigning. As of the end of the 3rd quarter, bush has raised over 84 million and has over 70 million on hand (opensecrets.org). In the face of such an overwhelming gap, it is under

Some topics in this essay:
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