The Fight for the DNC Chair Turns Nasty

According to NewsMax.com, the two front runners to replace Terry McAuliffe as chairman of the Democratic National Committee are none other than Howard Dean and Harold Ickes. And their backers are already fighting, and fighting dirty.

I already knew, of course, that Howard Dean can be melodramatic to the point of making anyone think he's crazy. That kind of thing you can laugh at--and most do. But I now learn that Harold Ickes has a very nasty history--it turns out that he physically bit someone deep enough to draw blood. (Actually, the link I gave above is the tame one; another link also alluding to the biting incident is profane and obscene.) And as a physician by training, I wouldn't make light of a human bite. That can be the nastiest of all wounds. And someone disinfected it with vodka? I have news for those guys: Treatment of human bites, like the treatment of all infected wounds, is not first aid. That's a doctor's job, best handled in the emergency room. Somebody's lucky he didn't lose the leg--or his life!

So this is what the Democratic Party is reduced to--choosing between a primal screamer and a felonious assailant. (Maybe he wasn't charged with anything, but a blood-drawing bite is a felony in my book.) But then, considering the repeated acts of vandalism by Democratic operatives against Republican headquarters both before and after the election (not to mention the attempted murder of a famous Florida Representative, perhaps we ought to have expected this.

NewsMax quotes someone as asking, "Do the Democrats really want their chairman to have to wear a muzzle?" Someone needs to ask what kind of outfit the Democrats really want to be.