Howard's Focus Group: Wife's Employees Thought Palin 'Mean'

Change font size:  A |  A

Move over, Rasmussen, and let Howard take over!

It's been a wild week, so how about a little comic relief?  Turns out Howard Dean does his own personal polling—among his wife's employees.  And, surprise!  They tend to agree with him. The DNC Chairman was chatting with Tom Brokaw on MSNBC this afternoon.

TOM BROKAW: What did you think of Sarah Palin last night?

HOWARD DEAN: I think the first half was terrific. I thought she really laid out who she was.  I was fascinated. The second half, she sounded like Dick Cheney, she really did. The same old attack stuff, the same old canards about Democrats that mostly weren't true.

If only Brokaw had thought to ask Dean to mention the canards that were true! In any case, a bit later Dean described how he keeps his finger on the people's pulse.

BROKAW: But from a tonal point of view, and an introduction of herself to the country, pretty successful speech.

DEAN: You know, I sort of do any informal focus group. My wife has a doctor's office in Burlington and five women work for her and some of them are Republicans. They all said pretty much just what I said: they thought that the first half of the speech was really interesting and that she was kind of mean in the second half of the speech.

Any polling experts out there?  Wondering what the margin of error might be on a non-anonymous, five-person sample exclusively composed of people who rely on your family for their livelihood.