Is Howard Dean the Dems' "New Coke"?

Rank & file Donks orgasmically revel in the red-meat/blue-state antics of their party chairman. Elected Donks - at least some of whom are beginning to realize that the turd-in-every-pocket, one-man-gaffe machine might just be a threat to them retaining that status - are increasingly having to give themselves some distance.

Three weeks ago it was Representative Barney Frank. Now the ranks of the "I don't want anybody to think he speaks for me, even though he really does" crowd are growing like mildew on a college student's dirty laundry pile.

John "Opie" Edwards:

Edwards also disagreed withDemocratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean’s controversial comment in a speech to liberal activists Thursday that many Republicans “have never made an honest living in their lives.”

“The chairman of the DNC is not the spokesman for the party,” Edwards said. “He’s a voice. I don’t agree with it.”

The titular head of the party isn't the party's spokesman? Wow, that's a first. What is he then? Chief fundraiser? Howie sucks at that, too. Makes you wonder if also-rans like Opie even remember what the job of the Chairman of the DNC is supposed to be. Although Edwards can perhaps be forgiven a bit for his confusion, since he spent the better part of four months last summer and fall sounding functionally indistinguishable from the man he's now fleeing like he was a gasoline tanker truck driver and Dr. Demented was a pyromaniac with a flamethrower on greased rollerblades.

And then just this morning there was Senator Hairplugs:

Democratic Senator Joe Biden blasted the head of his own party on Sunday for his over-the-top outbursts, saying that Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean doesn’t speak for him as well as most other Democrats he knows.

Asked about recent comments where Dean trashed Republicans as “evil” and said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay belongs in jail, Biden told ABC’s This Week: “He doesn’t speak for me with that kind of rhetoric and I don’t think he speaks for the majority of Democrats.”

Asked if he thought Democrats needed to “rein [Dean] in,” Biden said, “I don’t presume to suggest that I could rein in any chairman. But I think that the response from the bulk of the elected Democrats - I don’t imagine would be much different.”

“I hope [Dean] listens,” added the Delaware Democrat.

A hope most forelorn, as Chairman How only listens to his inner voices, and they're all crazier than he is.

Here's a caveat to counter-consider: Do I detect a note of calculation in the Delaware senior senator? Even triangulation, perhaps? For all the fun that we in the center-right blogosphere have with the never-a-dull-moment Scream King, there's a school of thought (of which I am the principal) that believes the former Vermont governor is playing a designated role. He travels the country spewing one laughably outrageous sound-bite after another, making his party look over-the-top foolish, while in the meantime elected Democrats like Frank, Edwards, and Biden can angle off of him to make themselves look "reasonable" and "moderate" by comparison.

This theory doesn't account for Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, of course, who come off as scarcely any less loopy than the man with the professionally happy fingers. But if more Dems start echoing the plagiarist, Hair the Boy Follicle Wonder, and My Boy Lollipop, it will become more and more inescapable that there is, after all, a method to this particular madness.

[HT: Say Anything vis GOP Bloggers]