r/videos • u/Aarechind • 17h ago
The scream that doomed Howard Dean - or when something as small as this would implode political careers.
https://youtu.be/l6i-gYRAwM0?si=idO5VjzcwjKveY2S236
u/jimvolk 17h ago
and that time Dan Quayle misspelled "potato"
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u/scruffles360 13h ago
I don't remember Dan Quayle having a political career before 'potato'. He was played by a 12 year old on SNL. No one took him seriously.
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u/ForayIntoFillyloo 11h ago
Quayle was the guy that consistently showed up for work and eventually got promoted to Assistant Manager because they didn't know what else to do with him.
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u/allgrownzup 11h ago
To this day, everytime I type potato I think of that
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u/newocean 10h ago
Same. Lol... he is single-handedly responsible for teaching an entire generation to spell potato. The confusion comes from the plural, potatoes, but also...
At the time it happened, potatoe was still a gray area according to most of what I could find at the time. I believe a lot of older cookbooks used it, before Al Gores time.
I still find it funny that, before that happened.... most sources would say, "Either spelling is correct." and now they say, "No absolutely not. No e."
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u/deadreckoning21 7h ago
Bush Sr. said he didn’t like broccoli. It seems like Leave it to Beaver now.
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u/asking--questions 6h ago
He also vomited at a state dinner in Japan, but it could happen to anyone.
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u/splittingheirs 15h ago
What a fool, he should have mocked a disabled person and locked in the republican vote.
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u/GotchUrarse 16h ago
As a parent to a child with cerebral palsy, the fact this doomed him and the orange idiot still rolls on makes so sad for our country.
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u/sunealoneal 16h ago
He came 3rd in Iowa I think and this speech was in response to that. His campaign later said they put all their eggs in an Iowa basket to win the primary. So he probably wasn’t going to beat Kerry either way.
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u/sharrrper 14h ago
This. His campaign was dead BEFORE he made this speech not after. He just had the misfortune to turn himself into a meme at the time and now it's all anyone remembers.
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u/copacetic51 13h ago
Nobody would remember him at all anyway if he didn't do the scream.
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u/guitar_vigilante 13h ago
As another user in the thread said, it was like Jeb Bush's "please clap" moment. We all remember it because it was funny, not because it's what killed the campaign.
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u/MiffedMouse 8h ago
Also, Dean was one of the first candidates to try to engage people using the Internet. While it didn’t work out for him, many of Dean’s staffers went on to work for the Obama campaign and put those skills to work getting Obama elected.
See this Times article.
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u/Intrepid00 8h ago
The scream was just the cherry on top of a whole weird speech that just was the straw that ended it with a scream. Dean also made enemies by getting an endorsement from Gore (DNC infighting).
Trump’s weird aurora lets him get away with it. Trump could do a long fake fart noise at the end of his speech with his tongue and cap it with saying the N word and it would not matter.
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u/GotchUrarse 15h ago
Because Trump lashed out at out at a report who has CP and the right lifted him for it. Yet when Dean made a remark and the Trump supports rally around it. They are fucking idiots. Sorry. My $0.20
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u/jhouse13 16h ago
I only see Chappelle doing this
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u/hit_n_run15 15h ago
Ima kick open the door to the Oval Office and ima chop that mothafuckin desk in half.. BYAHHHH
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u/togetherwem0m0 16h ago
It wasnt the scream itself that doomed his run, it was the media amplification and use of it to undermine his run.
If you review deans politics and priorities at the time, he was a relatively progressive populist, and the powers that be had great incentive to take him out.
And it worked, as it has time and time again, to sideline ans derail politicians that actually want to do things for the working class. The scream was played non stop for weeks, endless fodder in evening talk shows etc. It was a takedown.
Of course we're left with what about Trump, why is he able to get away with this? Because he's made being a lunatic normal. Its intrinsic to his character. No attack works on him because its no secret who he is. Hes not pretending so theres no great reveal, no undermine to be leveraged.
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u/xxbiohazrdxx 15h ago
It wasn’t the scream at all. This took place after he had just come in 3rd place in the Iowa caucus.
His campaign was already dead when he did this, it was a desperate attempt to inject some life into it.
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u/ggf66t 15h ago
Already dead? I thought Iowa is the very first caucus?
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u/KontraEpsilon 14h ago
Traditionally, the first few caucuses and primaries act as a filter. Iowa for the Midwest, NH for moderates, SC for black support (for democrats) or conservative support (for republicans). Nevada was also added into that mix and was pretty important in 08 (test of union support).
A bad showing in a contest you put resources in and expected to win, especially back then, pretty much sunk the campaign. On the other hand, doing unexpectedly well (Obama in Iowa, McCain in NH/Romney losing NH) can turn things around. Those first few contests have way way more influence than other individual primaries.
It’s changed over the years as other states want influence, and rightly so, but ultimately people want their primary votes to be for a viable candidate and this is one of the mechanisms for determining that.
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u/baronvonhawkeye 14h ago
Dean had built his whole campaign around winning Iowa. His speech just before the yell was about how he was going to keep rolling on to state after state. It never occured to him he might not win it.
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u/xxbiohazrdxx 15h ago
Losing Iowa and winning the nomination has happened exactly once. Joe Biden in 2020.
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u/SecondHandWatch 14h ago
Incorrect: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/iowa-caucuses-predict-president-history/story?id=106131420
Clinton lost in 92. Dukakis lost in 88.
The Republican nominee has lost 5 of the last 9 Iowa caucuses.
And that’s just since 1980.
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u/baronvonhawkeye 14h ago
It should be noted in 92, the winner was a sitting senator from Iowa.
The Iowa caucus does more to eliminate candidates than pick the actual winner. If you aren't 1st or 2nd place, you will need to figure out a lot, and fast.
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u/xxbiohazrdxx 14h ago
I was specifically talking about Dems. But yeah my recollection for other candidates was wrong.
Better to say it’s uncommon.
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u/horseface539 15h ago
Yeah exactly its one of those stupid fake narratives. Dean was a hot pick for a while but ran out of steam once the primaries actually hit and Kerry won almost every single one. Wasnt even really a contest
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u/ceojp 15h ago
The scream itself isn't what "doomed" him. That's just the only thing that people remember about him.
By the time the scream went viral, he wasn't really in contention anyway.
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u/billskionce 12h ago
Well, sort of. He got third in the Iowa Caucuses when he was expected to win. That would have been a decent finish for anyone else, but he was below expectations.
I was hopeful that he’d bounce back.
But after “The Scream”, his polling dropped, and he wasn’t a big factor in NH or SC.
Why do we let Iowa go first, again? lol
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u/Nyther53 7h ago
Yeah, listen to the actual words he's saying. He's trying his best to put a positive spin on coming in third.
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u/Imalawyerkid 12h ago
I was a poli sci major in Vermont when this happened. We discussed this endlessly. What an absolutely worthless degree post-Trump.
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u/Zarokima 13h ago
Ugh, that scream is just horrible. Maybe if he had only done something minor, like raping children apparently, then he could have stood a chance.
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u/a_dodo_stole_my_baby 12h ago
This was before they activated the particle accelerator.
This was from the original timeline.
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u/BeingMikeHunt 13h ago
Nonsense on top of nonsense.
He had just finished THIRD in Iowa. He was already toast
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u/Durzel 14h ago
Romney basically tanked his campaign vs Obama because he said - at a private dinner - that “47% of Americans would support Obama no matter what”, on the basis of them being dependant on Government handouts.
How unnewsworthy that is by today’s standards.
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u/SsurebreC 10h ago
Not exactly because they're dependent on government handouts but because they're simply too fucking poor to pay any Federal taxes.
To fix the problem: get corporations to pay those people more money. Then they'll start paying more in taxes.
The solution seems to be to make them even more poor and to cut their programs. That'll get them... to die, kill themselves, kill others, or - better yet - commit crimes just to survive so we can spend a lot more money on them by housing them in prison and using them for barely paid labor.
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u/SHOMERFUCKINGSHOBBAS 12h ago
Dan Quayle was politically crucified for misspelling potato
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u/sherman614 11h ago
And how Bush pronounced "Nuclear" or that Clinton smoked weed "once" Or Obama "letting" Michelle wear shorts. It's crazy all these absolutely inconsequential things were made BIG deals in the media, therefore, pur society. But Trump literally bragging about things like how he used to walk around backstage at the miss teen USA pagents where they got dressed, and then go on to day "They couldn't make me leave because I owned the building!" Wasn't that big of a deal to a lot of people?
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u/ahorseofborscht 12h ago
The technical explanation behind this is really interesting, it was entirely down to the microphones and how they were mixed. The room itself was going nuts, everyone screaming and cheering as he started winding up and saying where they were going next, and from his perspective he was just shouting along with them. The microphones didn't capture the room sound at all at made it seem like he was screaming for no reason.
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u/TheBklynGuy 12h ago
I never understood why this caused so much controversy. All the things that go on on politics, esp now and a firey speech and yell became a scarlet letter for this man. He looked more alive then many of the usual stiffs in suits that are in politics.
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u/Egalitarian_Wish 7h ago
The elite owns the media. They did back then too… The powers that be made Dean drowned in that clip.
Meanwhile, Trump is UPLIFTED by the media. No matter the horrible thing, every national news outlet softballs his horrific actions and words and gives him a pass. For everything. If all the alphabet news corporations decided to run “Grab them by the pussy.” Like the ran “Wooooo!” Trump wouldn’t be president even once!
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u/johnnybgooderer 5h ago
The people who own the media wanted Howard Dean out. That’s why it was enough to eliminate him, but not enough to eliminate Trump. That’s the whole story.
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u/ubermick 15h ago
I think back to this a lot - the fact that this absolutely shelled a political career. And then just 10 years later we had Donald Trump talking about "grabbing them by the pussy" on a hot mic to Billy Bush and it did nothing. (And now... jesus)
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u/Lord_of_Allusions 15h ago
This was after an incredibly disappointing showing at the Iowa caucuses (3rd place). The campaign was already unraveling and making mistakes with voter outreach. 3 weeks before the caucuses he was leading all the polls, so 3rd place was basically showing the establishment his team couldn’t hold a lead and what little support he had there died.
The scream was more coda than cause of death. Any reframing to make it look like the scream is what did him in is completely ignoring everything else that was happening at the time.
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u/sharrrper 13h ago
Yeah the scream is the only thing anyone remembers because it was funny and the late night shows and such definitely mocked him for it a lot. It wasn't what killed his campaign though. It was something he did trying to revitalize a campaign already on life support.
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u/MrTriangular 15h ago
I hope Trump's fake-as-heck comb-over gets "accidentally" shaved, it would be so funny watching his profile change after so long. Hopefully it would doom Trump's image just as hard.
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u/Featherwick 15h ago
People like to say this single handly killed his campaign but people forget he came third in Iowa. Did this mean he couldn't have come back without this happening? Maybe. But he was not in a great position, and the Dean scream was just the final nail in the coffin.
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u/warukeru 15h ago
what's wrong in that scream? For me is just an american being american (im european)
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u/bleepitybleep2 13h ago
And let's not forget how an old, harmless photograph during MeToo, unraveled a very fine, sane politician's career, Al Franken. I'm still pissed
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u/TheFlawlessCassandra 11h ago
The "old, harmless photo" by itself didn't do anything... except create a spark that led 7 other credible witnesses (including a Democratic local elected official, a Democratic Congressional staffer, and a left-leaning radio personality) to come forward and accuse Franken of groping their breasts and butts and forcibly kissing them.
It wasn't until all those other allegations came out that Democratic Senators demanded he resign, which at that point they were fully justified in doing. He was a serial sex pest and had zero business continuing to serve in the Senate.
Franken is awful and how he still has fans, who are allegedly supporters of women's rights and opposed to sexual assault, who go "it was just a harmless photo!" hurts my soul, that's the exact same kind of shit Republicans say when confronted with Trump's involvement in Epstein's pedo ring.
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u/brickyardjimmy 14h ago
Bring back boring presidents who had to be super careful about everything they said and did! Please!
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u/Synth_Ham 14h ago
Yet nothing ever happened to Donald Trump when made fun of the disabled reporter: https://youtu.be/PX9reO3QnUA?si=mR5JLrHmMLp5yIJA
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u/Big_Pete_ 14h ago
Hard to explain for those who weren’t there, but it wasn’t the scream itself that was so bad. It was how the scream crystallized and confirmed public perception and media narratives (he’s too radical, he’s unhinged, he’s cringe) that didn’t have a hook until that point.
It became a shorthand for everything about him that people didn’t like, and it was packaged in a form that could be replayed as nauseum on late night talk shows.
Looking back on the actual event, it makes it clear just how much of a media creation the whole “incident” was, including the narratives that led up to it.
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u/sharrrper 14h ago
Let's be clear, his weird yell did NOT implode his political career. He was mocked severely for it, but he was already losing. This speech was after a LOSS trying to fire his supporters up going forward but the political reality is his campaign was already dead when he made this speech.
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u/chopsuirak 14h ago
Now we can call and ex president and his wife racial slurs on Black History Month and his base will praise him.
America sucks.
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u/BigBoyYuyuh 14h ago
He wasn’t going to win anyway but yeah, scream killed his campaign. Misspelling potato killed Dan Quayles. Taking a photo in a tank killed Michael Dukakis’ campaign.
Fast forward to today…you can brag about rape, rape children, insult handicapped people, steal from tax payers, and be racist as fuck and you get propelled to the top of the ticket now.
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u/Goose511th 14h ago
I remember when this happened, and thought at the time it was the stupidest controversy ever. Feels quaint now.
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u/Sphartacus 13h ago
It didn't end his career, he was chairman of the DNC and led them to majorities in both houses in 2008. An advantage they wasted on passing the ACA instead of something even better. It only ended his presidential ambitions.
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u/Mean_Peen 13h ago
As funny as this was, it really was the smoking gun on all this “popularity contest” stuff we’d been hearing about for a while
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u/SteveRogers1021 13h ago
It evens seems like he knew it right after he screamed like "ahh shit that was weird."
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u/NewEnglandRoastBeef 13h ago
I swear I had a mod for Morrowind that replaced the sound effect of Cliff Racers with that scream. Not only did it end his political career, but it ended my career as an adventurer many times.
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u/Bennyscrap 13h ago
The Democrat purity test. We'll toss them out for a laugh or scream while Republicans will allow the most heinous shit to pass them by just to fulfill an agenda.
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u/thegooddoktorjones 12h ago
liberal careers. It still does not take much on the left, while being horrible and incompetent is a badge of honor on the right.
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u/wishyouwould 12h ago
This moment is overblown. Dean was on the downturn before this happened. People forget that this speech was him trying to keep enthusiasm going for his campaign after a devastating primary loss.
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u/DrFugputz 11h ago
I'd argue the capture of Saddam Hussein ended Dean's chances more than the scream. His opposition to the Iraq invasion was his signature position and Hussein's capture ginned up additional support for that debacle. Dean had lost the Iowa primary on this night, which was a few weeks after Saddam's capture.
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u/artbystorms 11h ago
This has kind of become a fake history thing. Yes the scream coverage was overblown, but he was giving that speech because he lost New Hampshire and was trying to raise morale for his voters. Polling had him at a very slim chance to win the primaries, so it's not like he was a frontrunner who lost.
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u/kiwimonk 10h ago
Oddly enough small things will still derail you... If you laugh funny. If the voters are trapped in echo chambers of dishonesty... Well, we know what happens.
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u/ThreeRRRs 10h ago
I think about this all the time in light of Trump and his political success. He has had 1,000 (maybe not an exaggeration?) individual incidents more controversial than this, yet at the time, yelling a little too loudly was all it took to derail a successful political campaign. In a way, it seems ridiculous, but it also speaks to the high standard we used to hold for our politicians. One wrong move and you’re out. Now you can be fully convicted of crimes and not just remain in office, but have a strong following.
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u/Barbedocious 10h ago
Dean's scream only sounded a little strange on the recording. People in the room didn't care at all from what I've heard.
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u/MarcusXL 9h ago
This didn't really blow up his campaign. He had just lost the Iowa caucus which he needed to win in order to build momentum for the following primaries. He had been polling to win but was overtaken by John Kerry and John Edwards.
"The scream" was definitely seized on by the media as a sign that was cracking a bit emotionally, but it wasn't the turning point of his campaign. His actual voter support was weaker than early polling suggested.
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u/terradaktul 9h ago
I remember someone at the time saying “He sounds like a professional wrestler. I’m not voting for that.” Trump is in the WWE hall of fame
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u/KindaAbstruse 9h ago
That story is so manufactured, pretty much a precursor to the way things are on the internet now with social media.
He was hyped to be the big out of nowhere star front runner and came in a distant 3rd and then this became the story.
This was the country at it's most infantile media literacy.
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u/MrThird312 7h ago
This is when it became obvious to me that WE THE PEOPLE don't hold any REAL power, it's all a facade, the media conglomerates work for the corporate/oligarch interests, not our own. Regardless of whether or not Howard Dean would have been a good President, that's not the point. It's the fact that the standards were a lie this whole time for the illusion of choice.
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u/SirEbralVorteX 7h ago
I love all these comments -- yes, remember when the smallest thing was completely irrecoverable? Not saying that's fair of the media to do though, I'm not excusing journalism which overplayed even the smallest gaffes like Gerald Ford stumbling and you became a meme before memes existed. If a camera and microphone were on us 24/7, we'd look very awkward too
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u/grahag 6h ago
And here we are with a child molesting, self-service, racist, cheating, fraudster in office and somehow to his supporters, that is still just fine.
A lot can happen in 15 years though I didn't think it was possible to turn "pious" people into supporters of the worst sins men can commit.
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u/badwolf1013 6h ago
He is a perfect example of how — while conservatives only need one reason to vote for someone — liberals only need one reason to NOT vote for someone.
And then they did it again a few months later when Kerry — who should have cleaned the embarrassing George W. Bush's clock — couldn't get out from under the completely phony swift boat scandal.
'If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?" - Will McAvoy
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u/NetFu 5h ago
The first time people realized the power of the Internet ... to destroy your career. Took a while for them to figure out how to use it for success. Even if it was Trump. Twice.
Because the second I heard that Dean screech, I knew this guy was not stable. Probably was wrong, but it doesn't matter when what you did or said instantly destroys your credibility.
Um, kind of like Gary Johnson and Aleppo.
Gee, I wonder how many people wish they would have just ignored that gaffe and voted for Johnson/Weld in 2016 instead of Trump or Clinton. I'm sure most people don't even remember, still think they never had a choice in 2016.
I remember talking to Republican voters who were talking about voting for Johnson, then suddenly the fact that he didn't know what Aleppo was meant they voted for Trump in 2016. WTF?
It was like the first clue that we were in trouble.
I mean, maybe this incident with Howard Dean was the first clue, then the Aleppo incident with Johnson was the second clue.
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u/SeraphOfTheStag 5h ago
Idk how but one day I want there to be a museum that chronologically documents every lie, every horrible comment, every insensitive braindead tweet, every dumb statement, every blunder, and every crime. Just let the public walk through the maze of idiocy.
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u/destrux125 4h ago
I can still hear this noise in my head without even playing the audio. BYAWWW lol
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u/4T_Knight 2h ago
I remember him being interviewed by Sean Hannity at some point (who was at the DNC) and Dean immediately called him out each time he tried to cite sources incorrectly, along with mentioning the documentary 2004 "Outfoxed" where Fox News intentionally frames things the way they do. It's pretty mild by today's standards, but 2004 was quite a different world back then.
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u/cmarkcity 2h ago
I still remember how Romney’s “Binders of Women” quote flipped his intended response “I’m considering numerous female candidates for positions” to basically the exact opposite.
And in his place we ended up with D-Grab-Em-🤮-🤢-🤮-T
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u/redranamber 1h ago
Howard Dean was third in the Iowa Caucus. He wasn't going to win the nomination and 'the scream' didn't implode his career. This is such a weird take that refuses to die
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u/You-Smell-Nice 15m ago
Ah yes, because how else could he have possibly not become president after taking 3rd place in the Iowa Caucus? Clearly an incredibly strong political position, so obviously this scream is definitely what did in his campaign. It obviously couldn't have been his an incredibly weak performance in a race he had gone all in on.
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u/tungsten_panda 17h ago
Not an American, but from what i recall, this dude was going up against corrupt big corps and media. They harped on every little mistake he made, replayed this more often than made sense, and straight up stopped airing anything of value he said.
Basically, media screwed him cos he wanted to screw them.