Your Weekly Rush

Well, it turns out that Dean is a loser, according to Rush. He read a letter from a friend, who said, "I had a thought while you were talking about how the press was playing up Howard Dean's fund-raising "success." Everybody is saying he has raised $7 million. Whoop-de-do! Seven million dollars is the equivalent of convincing only 3,500 people to give you $2,000 [the maximum individual donation].

Now, if you can't do better than that in a country of about 300 million people, you certainly don't have very many people who care about your being president. Dean should have had that amount from a bunch of Vermontomaniacs before he even started."

Of course, Rush would have a hard time understanding the significance of Dean's fundraising success. These are donations, collections from individual Americans, bypassing both the Party Machines and the Corporate Trough. So they show a level of support that is greater than it appears.

I also don't think that most of the donators to Dean have given $2,000 as this letter suggests. I mean, sure if you divide $7 million by $2,000 it looks like pretty weak support. But if you divide it by $200? $20? What is the average size of a donation over at Dean Headquarters?

Anyway the election hasn't even started yet--we'll see what happens when it does.