Howard Dean the entertainer

For those of you who missed Meet the Press today,Howard Dean again showed why he's not your ordinary Democratic Party Chairman:

MR. RUSSERT: In your home state of Vermont, there's a vacancy for the United States Senate about to occur. Bernie Sanders, the congressman from Vermont, wants to run for that seat. He is a self- described avowed socialist.

DR. DEAN: Well, that's what he says. He's really a populist.

MR. RUSSERT: But is there room in the Democratic Party for a socialist?

DR. DEAN: Well, first of all, he's not a socialist, really.

MR. RUSSERT: He...

DR. DEAN: He hasn't said that for a while.

MR. RUSSERT: Oh, he has a--he wrote in his book: "Outside or in the House, I am a Democratic socialist."

DR. DEAN: Well, a Democratic socialist--all right, we're talking about words here. And Bernie can call himself anything he wants. He is basically a liberal Democrat, and he is a Democrat that--he runs as an Independent because he doesn't like the structure and the money that gets involved. And he actually has, I think, some good points about campaign finance reform. The bottom line is that Bernie Sanders votes with the Democrats 98 percent of the time. And that is a candidate that we think...

MR. RUSSERT: So you'd support him?

DR. DEAN: We may very well end up supporting him. We need to work some things out because it's very important for us not to split the votes in some of the other offices as well.

Howard Dean broadening the Democratic Party base to include socialists.Self-described socialists.MSNBC