A Midwinter Night’s Scream
Twenty years ago, it only took three seconds to end a promising campaign.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the fact that it’s an election year has likely not escaped you. Every four years, it seems that every other ad is for a political candidate, especially if you’re “lucky” enough to live in one of a handful of swing states (I’m being both sarcastic and sincere — on the one hand, I’m sure the political season can be really annoying for those folks, but on the other, having your vote actually count must be nice), and every day brings new sound bites, polls, and talking heads willing to dissect them all. Living in Washington DC, politics are our home team sports, and I will confess that I used to enjoy the intrigue of it all. That was before Project 2025 and credible threats to democracy itself gave me stress rashes and insomnia. And still, I can’t seem to stop following the news.
And there’s a lot of news to follow. Between an assassination attempt, the President withdrawing from the race, the Democrats miraculously coalescing around a new candidate in a matter of days, and the largest single-day fundraising haul ever, July 2024 was one for the history books, and the unprecedented nature of this campaign seems to show no signs of slowing down.
Often, when I can pull myself away from the news alerts that blow up my phone on an hourly basis, I like to reflect on simpler times. Many times this past month, I’ve been reflecting on the election that took place 20 years ago, back in 2004.
It was America’s 55th presidential election, and George W. Bush was the incumbent Republican President. Though he had lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000, the country had rallied around him in an unusual display of unity after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Since then, he had invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq, based on claims that both Democrats and most of the United Nations found a little suspicious (and no, we never found those WMDs).
So despite his 90% approval ratings in late 2001, there was a real chance to unseat the Bush/Cheney administration in 2004. Our eventual nominee, John Kerry, wasn’t quite able to close the deal. On election night, he won 251 electoral votes, but had to concede to Bush, who took 286.
John Kerry was, to put it mildly, not the most exciting political figure. Vaguely reminiscent of Ichabod Crane without the tricornered hat, he touted his service during the Vietnam War as a contrast to Bush’s time hanging out in the Texas Air National Guard, 9,200 miles from active combat. But the Republicans were just getting good at turning their opponent’s chief strengths into their primary weakness, and assembled a group ironically called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who proceeded to tell a bunch of lies about Kerry’s record, which was truly heroic, and painted him as a coward under fire.
But as outrageous as that tactic was, it pales in my memory to the much bigger scandal of the 2004 election. I’m talking, of course, about the scream.
The Democrats might have won in 2004 if their candidate had possessed the kind of charisma needed to withstand one disgraceful lie after another, present a compelling counternarrative, and prosecute the case against the liars. That candidate might have been Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont and early front-runner in the 2004 primaries. He was charming, articulate, and possessed of a fighting spirit while still being the guy you’d like to share the proverbial beer with.
That all ended on January 19, 2004. He had placed a surprise third in the Iowa caucuses, and his supporters were jubilant at his strong showing. At a rally in West Des Moines, the crowd was so noisy that Dean couldn’t hear his own voice coming out of the speakers. Clearly riding the wave of euphoria, he emitted what can only be called a wall of noise into the microphone. I’ve never heard a sperm whale in childbirth, but it probably sounds something like the infamous Dean scream. Over the next four days, the “Dean scream” was played 633 times on national news networks and cable news channels.
The scream itself was about three seconds long. And maybe he wouldn’t have won anyway (most historians agree on this point), but at the time, it felt like an accidental gaffe that ended a presidential campaign overnight.
It seems pretty mild compared to a guy who began his political career with racist attacks on the nation’s first Black president, and who has since been convicted of sexual assault and 34 felony counts of fraud, accused his opponent of “turning Black” a few years ago for political gain, openly mocked a reporter with disabilities, repeated invoked Hannibal Lecter on the campaign trail, proposed injecting bleach to end a global pandemic, referred to fellow Americans as “vermin,” and lest we forget, led a treasonous insurrection to reverse the results of the last election he lost.
But who knows? Perhaps 20 years from now, it will all seem slightly quaint. I sure hope not. (Psst … are you registered to vote?)
This essay first appeared in Letters from CAMP Rehoboth, a newsletter for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and allied communities of Rehoboth Beach, DE. Learn more at camprehoboth.org.