Howard Dean, the physician, former governor of Vermont, and failed presidential candidate, replayed his infamous “Dean Scream” — that effectively ended his president run in 2004 — to encourage the delegates at the Democratic National Convention to help make Hillary Clinton president.
“Do not wait until November to make your voice heard. Go to hillaryclinton.com to donate right now. Help make history,” Dean told the audience immediately before mimicking the “Dean Scream” that will forever define him in the annals of American political history.
“This race is going to be won on the ground and it’s going to be won in Colorado, and in Iowa, and North Carolina and Michigan and Florida and Pennsylvania, and then we go to the White House!” Dean exclaimed in a slightly subdued version of the scream that he delivered after his disappointing third-place finish in the 2004 Iowa caucuses.
Replays of the “Dean Scream” set the media ablaze in viral mockery in the 72 hours after video cameras captured his speech that night in Iowa.
Mercifully, on Tuesday night in Philadelphia, Dean did not add the infamous final word, “Yeah!,” which in the original seemed to go on forever.
It was not clear why Dean or the organizers of the Democratic National Convention thought reviving such a personally embarrassing memory on this night was a good idea, or why it might advance Clinton’s chances of winning the White House.
“Did he really just go there?” one Republican who was watching the speech on television tells Breitbart News.
“His ‘Dean Scream’ will be as helpful for Hillary as it was for him,” the Republican says.
Dean, the first New York City-born left wing politician from Vermont to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, built his 2004 campaign on the same kind of grassroots network that helped Sen. Bernie Sanders, the second New York City-born left wing politician from Vermont to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, to catch fire in the 2016 primaries.
Dean began his speech by appealing “to the millions of Republicans who don’t recognize their party” in the presidential and vice-presidential candidates nominated last week in Cleveland.
He then described his long friendship with Hillary Clinton, and the role she played in the health care policies of the Obama administration.
“Twenty-five years ago I met Hillary Clinton,” Dean said.
“Between the aspirations of Harry Truman and Barack Obama, there was Hillary,” Dean said of Clinton’s role in health care.
“Poised and persistent,” was how Dean described Hillary.
“When her first attempt at health care did not work out, she did not give up,” Dean said of Clinton’s failed and secretive efforts as First Lady in her husband Bill Clinton’s administration to force federally mandated universal health care upon the country.
“Thanks to her efforts, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program was born,” Dean said.
“Today, more than 8 million children have health care as a result,” the former governor added.
“When Barack Obama took office, he took up the fight, when the Affordable Health Care Act [Obamacare] took effect, we expanded health care to 20 million more people,” he asserted.
Dean did not mention President’s false promise that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” which was used in the propaganda effort that preceded the passage of the act in 2010.
Nor did he mention the stunning increase in health insurance rates that have taken place since the passage of Obamacare, or the fact that more than a dozen state health care exchanges authorized under the act have failed.
“We have made so much progress,” Dean said.
“We need to elect the person who will finish the job,” he exclaimed.
“Hillary Clinton has a plan to drive town health care costs… and take us the last mile and finally achieve helat care for all,” he concluded.
Dean did not explain why Clinton has apparently not shared that plan to “drive down health care costs” to President Obama, whose signature legislative accomplishment in Obamacare has had, for the most part, the opposite effect.
Dean did, however, criticize GOP nominee Donald Trump.
“Now Donald Trump has a plan too. He would rip up Obamacare and throw 20 million off their health insurance,” the former Vermont governor asserted.
“He will take you back to the time where insurance companies would charge you more just because you are a woman,” Dean said of Trump.
“His vice-presidential pick is no better,” Dean said.
“He voted against expanding the Children’s Health Care Program, which Hillary helped to start,” Dean said of Mike Pence.
“Mike Pence voted to end Medicare as we know it,” he said.
Dean went on to call “guns . . . the ultimate health care crisis.”
“We need a president whose decisions are rooted in the facts,” Dean said, and then entirely out of context, added this one line:
“We need a president who knows what it takes to defeat ISIS not with ignorance and bombast.