Fighting words from Dean in large Seattle rally

Struggling presidential candidate Howard Dean used a speech to a yelling, stomping, liberal Seattle crowd yesterday to paint fellow-Democrat John Kerry and President Bush as twin tools of special interests.

Dean railed against Kerry, the Massachusetts senator who has supplanted Dean as the front-runner in the Democratic race, and said news yesterday that Kerry took more lobbyist money than any other member of the Senate made him so mad he was sputtering.

"This is the challenge for the Democratic Party: Do we stand with the special interests and the Washington cozy crowd, or do we stand with ordinary Americans who we have claimed to represent?" Dean said to an overflow crowd at Seattle's Town Hall.

Dean was in Seattle to win support in the state's Feb. 7 Democratic caucuses.

"I think the American public has moved their attention," Dean said. "It's not as important an issue. People are losing their jobs. They are losing their health insurance. People are losing hope in the country. I think they are just throwing up their hands, saying, 'My God, what's happening here?' "

"It seems to me sometimes there's a little of George Bush in John Kerry," Dean said in the interview. "George Bush says the most blatant things that are just plain false.

" 'No Child Left Behind' leaves every child behind, which is something John Kerry voted for," Dean said of the president's education plan. "How many rationales has George Bush given us for the Iraq war? Well, how many rationales has John Kerry given us for the Iraq war, which he also supported?"

Dean received one of his biggest ovations after a heckler asked what he'd do to reduce the abortion rate. He suggested universal health care for children, sex education that isn't just abstinence-based, and finally, "We're going to tell all those white boys who run the Republican Party to stay out of our bedrooms."