Cenk Uygur: Joining us on The Young Turks, Governor Howard Dean. Only the real fighters get that kind of intro.

Howard Dean: There we go.

Uygur: Governor, always good to have you on.

Dean: Thanks for having me on.

Uygur: We appreciate it. Now, you've made a lot of headlines recently. You just called Fox News racist, which is awesome.

Dean: Well, I said what they did was racist.

Uygur: Yes. So tell us...

Dean: Some of them are racist, and some of them aren't.

Uygur: Right. So tell us why you think what they did in the Shirley Sherrod case is racist.

Dean: Because what they're doing is race-baiting. Basically, they, they have had a narrative going on for quite some time, I think the most famous kickoff was Glenn Beck saying that Barack Obama hated white people, what they're doing is appealing to people's basest instincts, racial hatred. Racial hatred is something that's, that's something, it's endemic in the country, but we've really gone way past it now. We've made huge progress, but there are still a fringe of people who are, who have great fears about race. And what they're doing is feeding those fears. They say things that aren't true, they put together stories as Fox did with the Shirley Sherrod thing that isn't true, they have done the same thing in this nonsense about the Black Panther Party and Obama coddling black people and all this crap. It's just not true, and it's racist. If you're appealing to people's racial fears, then you're a racist.

Uygur: Do you think that the whole theme that Beck, and then Limbaugh, which is, of course, who is not part of Fox News, but part of the conservative...

Dean: Yeah, and he is a racist, there's no question about that. I mean, when George Steinbrenner died, he said something like, well, his major contribution is to have made, created a lot, a whole lot of African American millionaires. It's just, you know, this kind of stuff is just awful.

Uygur: Do you think the theme that they're building that they keep going back to, that this is a redistribution of wealth, that that's what Obama wants to do, that it's payback for slavery or, or, you know, all the rest of it, et cetera, they talk about reparations, is the code words there, Obama's here to take white people's money and give it to black people?

Dean: Sure it is. I mean, that's what they do. And it's, no, it's stupid, it's bad for the country, it's what I call the Slobodan Milosevic approach to American politics. You divide people as much as possible. In the short term, it sometimes works to, you know, people do get elected on this stuff, but it always ends up destroying the country.

RJ Eskow: But isn't there an element of it, of this, Governor Dean, that has to do with the fact that people are resentful, that they feel screwed, and they don't know why but they know that times are tough, and isn't it, you know, Milosevic is an interesting comparison, but don't you think there's also a connection to Father Coughlin, and...

Dean: Sure.

Eskow: And the 30s, and I want to tie it at some point to your piece today in the Huffington Post that nobody seems to be fighting for regular people, they're afraid and this is a way of giving a name to their fear, that it's minorities taking what you deserve away from you?

Dean: Right, but this is not anything different than George Wallace did when he was running for President. Nobody would pretend that George Wallace wasn't a racist when he was doing that, or Lester Maddox. I mean, this is, this is just base politics, which is really terrible for the country. You know, look, I can put up with Fox being conservative about economics and all that stuff, you know, we can have our differences of opinion. This is just fundamentally bad for the country. It's a group of people who've put their own needs in front of the needs of the country.

Uygur: You know, is the problem here that the right wing is making a case, hey, listen, the reason you're angry, as Richard is saying, and the reason why we're in economic tough times is because of, you know, Obama wants to take your money and give it in reparations or the government did it with Fannie and Freddie and it's all the government's fault and if you just let the bankers, you know, be more in charge with less regulation, we'd all be all right, but then that's, so they lay out that case, but then the left wing doesn't seem to lay out their case nearly as well, saying, no, no, no, wait a minute, it was the bankers, we do need government to step in and be a cop here, et cetera, and that you're misdirecting your anger? Is that the problem, that the left wing is just not stating its case forcefully enough?

Dean: No, I think they do. I think they don't have the outlet, the propaganda that, you know, Fox News is really a propaganda organization. That's what Rupert Murdoch does, he's really deeply committed to this kind of politics and, you know, he is, this apparently is what they want to do. Fox is not, nobody could argue that, that there's a, you know, there's not a propaganda component to all this.

Eskow: Why is there not any talk in Democratic circles about reviving the fairness doctrine? You have a Republican...

Dean: Oh, we talked about that for a while. You know, that, I think that the Democrats got very scared about that. The talk shows screamed and yelled and carried on about all that kind of stuff and talked about them trying to get rid of talk radio and all this kind of stuff, and there was a lot of discussion about that in the last Congress before the President was, President Obama was elected. And that just disappeared. They just caved in to right-wing talk radio.

Uygur: But you see, the problem isn't the fairness doctrine, if you ask me. Look, you wrote the article today, Governor Dean, "No More Apologies -- It's Time to Stand Up for Our Convictions". I think that's at the heart of the problem, because look, if we wanted to make the case, you don't need talk radio, you don't need a Fox News equivalent on television, you have the President of the United States, he has the biggest bully pulpit there is. If he just made the case, well then, that would resonate throughout the country. Do you think he's making the case forcefully enough?

Dean: What, for the fairness doctrine?

Uygur: No, no, no, no, for all the progressive positions, whether it's taking on the bankers...

Dean: No, I don't. I mean, I think that, you know, that's one of the problems. And the problem I don't think is the President, I think the President is a reformer, but he's got an awful lot of people around him who are basically inside Washington folks, and this is not what they do. They don't know, they don't understand really what happens to ordinary Americans and how tough it is, they just know Washington. Washington's a very different culture. There was a fascinating poll that I saw, I think it was on MSNBC, oh, a couple of weeks ago, that showed that inside the beltway, 44% of the people think the country's going in the right direction, 46% think it isn't, outside the beltway, 23% of people think the country's going in the right direction, and something like 75% don't. So there's a really hugely different perception about how everything works inside Washington, and that's, I think that's one of the problems.

Uygur: Well, the problem is that for the people inside Washington, the country's going great. They're the ones that are in power, know? And they're not always...

Dean: And they're not unemployed.

Uygur: Right.

Dean: Which is how the Republicans can vote no on the unemployment benefit extensions. The idea, one of the things, the most disgusting things I've heard in the last couple of weeks other than all this racist stuff from Fox is the idea from the Republicans putting forward that if you give unemployment benefits, people won't look for a job. Tell that to a 50-year-old with two kids and a house and a mortgage that's underwater. I mean, that's just disgusting. They have no conception of what ordinary life is like for most people. And that's why they keep talking about stuff like race and all this business, because they want to, you know, the Republican economic program is basically, let's go back and do what George Bush did, which of course is what got us in this mess in the first place, enormous deficits, coddling, you know, bankers and insurance companies and letting them do whatever they wanted, and in order to divert attention from their own record, they do exactly what people have so often done, and this is not an American or a right-wing tendency, lots of people do this, the left wing did it, the Bolsheviks did this, you know, raise issues that scare people so you don't have to deal with the real issues that, when you're in the wrong and when you've screwed everything up.

Eskow: Well, speaking of raising issues that scare people, we have an issue that's a hot button that people feel passionately about, which is Social Security, protecting Social Security. And you're a little closer to this culture than I am of Washington, although I would never accuse you of being part of it, but, I respect you too much for that, but my question is this, why is it that so often when reform-minded people and reasonable people get into positions of power they feel the need, they seem to feel the need to prove that they're serious to the power brokers in Washington by going after something that people rely on like Social Security that is fundamentally sound, that needs a couple adjustments, but want to prove, seem to want to prove their seriousness to that culture by saying, we're going to take it on and we're going to cut it?

Dean: Well, there's a lot less of that going on. When Bush tried to privatize it, he just, it blew up in his face, and I don't think you're going to see a lot of talk like that.

Eskow: But you have Obama appointing a commission with two Social Security cutters on it, Alan Simpson who's wacky on the subject and Erskine Bowles who tried to cut it with Newt Gingrich when he was in the Clinton White House, so there's some of that going on, and it seems to me the Democrats are dealing away a great issue for themselves with it.

Dean: Well, look, I mean, I actually think we need to get beyond issues like that. They're obviously inflammatory. There are some things you can do to deal with Social Security which don't involve reducing benefits. The truth is if you... Social Security is not as big a problem as Medicare, that really is a problem. Social Security could be fixed if you just let everybody pay the full Social Security tax instead of cutting it off at $100,000 in income. And that's the end of the Social Security problem. But look, these things are all, all ought to be discussed, but what blows me away is these Republicans that are arguing at the same time you've got to privatize Social Security, which would've ruined, by the way, almost everybody who was taking Social Security, can you imagine if they had their money in the market instead of getting it through Social Security in the last 18 months? And then they want to cut taxes for people making a million dollars a year. No wonder they race-bait all the time. If that's what their economic program is, nobody in their right mind is going to agree to that except for the 1% of the people making a million dollars a year.

Uygur: We're talking to Howard Dean, of course he's the former head of the DNC and former Governor of Vermont. But all of these tie in together, Governor Dean. You know, we've got a deficit commission that Obama appointed with 14 out of 18 members being fiscal conservatives, we've got the capitulation to Andrew Breitbart and Fox News over Shirley Sherrod which was so sad, Van Jones...

Dean: Well, I think that, I mean, I think that, I don't think Obama did that himself. I think that was staff that did that, and they jumped the gun and they made a mistake and they, I mean, one thing about Obama is he really does want all the facts. I think, I'd be shocked if he had anything to do with that decision.

Uygur: No, but you see, you're being way too kind to him because he sets the tone. And he's the one that authorized Van Jones, he's the one that authorized ACORN, and so the tone is set that, OK, well, you know, when Fox News barks, we, you know, we react. And so, but even if we take your, your, you know, kinder, gentler approach to Obama, well then, how do you burst that Washington, D.C. bubble where the right wing is always right and to be feared and that you should never cater to the people who actually got you elected?

Dean: Well, see, I think you've got to have some people who understand outside-the-beltway and who don't have an inside-the-beltway mentality. There are very few of those in his inner circle. You've got to, you've got to get some people who can talk to ordinary people. I happen to think the President's, I'm a fan of the President. I'm a fan of Barack Obama, and I remain a fan of Barack Obama, but I do think that a lot of these problems are because there's an inside-the-beltway mentality that people get sucked into. And if you can't, I mean, what saved me as a political servant in the two big jobs I've ever had, the DNC Chairmanship and the Governorship, what really made me successful in those jobs was staff, smart staff that wouldn't let me get away with any crap, who had themselves really well-centered, who wouldn't, and a wonderful wife who wouldn't let me put on any airs and not think I was too important. And those are the things that really, really center you and keep you connected to the people of Vermont, in my case, or the Democrats around the country, and the American people in the President's case. I think that's what the problem is.

Uygur: Well, sure, but he has surrounded himself with those people, the Tim Geithners.

Dean: I agree, and that's a problem.

Uygur: And Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers and the list goes on. You know, here we said if he doesn't pick Elizabeth Warren for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it almost feels like the straw that breaks the camel's back. Is this guy ever going to do anything progressive or are his Washington insider advisers always going to win and always going to push him to the right?

Dean: Well, that's the problem, because I don't, as I said in the Huffington Post piece today, I don't think you can win that way. I think you win by, I mean, look at how far the right is, and they've been pretty damn successful. They've elected two Presidents, George W. Bush and, actually, they elected three, but George H.W. turned out not to be so far right, although his judicial appointments were pretty dreadful, and Reagan. And the truth is that they've gotten further and further right, they have a bunch of judicial, right-wing judicial activists who really are rewriting the Constitution on the Supreme Court. And how do they do it? With their platform which very few people really agree with in this country, I mean, people agree with the Democrats about 70% of the time on issues. How do they do it? Conviction politics. And I think you're going to see some Democrats in conservative districts win reelection because they're willing to go and explain their points of view to people instead of saying, yeah, I'm just going to be afraid of all the right-wing talk show hosts. Here's what I believe, here's why I believe it, that goes a long way in politics. People are dying for leadership like that. They really want that, and that's how the Democrats can succeed, is do the things we said we were going to do, bring real change to Washington and then let's get it out of the realm of the inside-the-beltway people.

Uygur: I couldn't possibly agree with that more. I'm 100% in that camp. All right, so final question for you, Governor Dean. Fox News has responded to your charges, they've put out a statement. Michael Clemente, Senior VP of Fox News, says, "As we said this past week, some people such as the failed candidate Dean reflexively blame Fox for almost anything." How do you respond to that?

Dean: I just don't take Fox seriously. They're not a news outfit, they're a propaganda outfit. I go on Chris Wallace because I like him, and actually I think he is fair, he's tough, and of course he has to spout the party line once in a while, which he did yesterday. But I don't go on any of those other programs because it's not a serious outfit. And you know, so that's a propaganda statement. And it's interesting, I saw that earlier, and I thought to myself, that's really interesting, that's what you'd expect from a spokesman from a right-wing politician, and it's not a coincidence.

Uygur: By the way, here are some of the people you might run into if you went on more Fox News programs, the failed candidate Sarah Palin, the failed candidate Mike Huckabee, the failed candidate Rudy Giuliani, and I can go on and on all night long.

Dean: Right.

Uygur: All right. Governor Howard Dean, thank you so much for joining us on The Young Turks.

Dean: Thanks guys, and keep up the good work. You guys write good stuff, and you're very bright and I really enjoy reading your stuff.

Uygur: Thank you so much.

Eskow: And I just want you to know, I worked in the health insurance industry for many years before I saw the light, and I saw you speak on the topic, and I thought, finally somebody understands what's going on. So you keep up the good work too, please.

Dean: Hey, thanks so much.

Uygur: All right, thank you. We'll be right back. Young Turks.