Politics & Power Quote by Howard Dean

Dean’s line is a political judo move: he borrows the Tea Party’s populist posture, validates a core grievance, then quietly reroutes it away from its usual target list. The first clause, “That’s one of the things,” sounds almost folksy, like he’s granting the movement a rare moment of credit. Then he doubles down with the blunt add-on, “and they do,” a hard stop that refuses both partisan hedging and Democratic consultant-speak. It’s less a concession than an invitation: if you’re angry about who’s running the country, you’re not wrong. You’re just aiming at the wrong villains.

The intent is coalition-building without flattery. Dean isn’t trying to become Tea Party-adjacent; he’s trying to peel off the movement’s anti-elite energy and make it legible to a center-left critique of corporate power. The subtext is that cultural rage and libertarian rhetoric often function as decoys, while the real, measurable influence sits with boardrooms, lobbyists, and check-writing networks that shape tax policy, deregulation, and campaign rules. By acknowledging corporate influence as fact, he reframes it as a shared diagnosis rather than a left-wing talking point.

Context matters: this is the post-Citizens United era, when “corporations are people” became a punchline and Super PAC money stopped pretending to be a side issue. Dean’s phrasing also hints at a broader asymmetry: conservatives may distrust government, but corporate influence is frequently exercised through government. The line works because it treats populism as raw material, not a punchline, and because it dares to say the quiet part plainly.