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Opinion: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean: Fox News is now 3-for-3

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It must be time to hold hands around the campfire and start singing ‘Kumbaya’: Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean appeared this morning on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ capping a week of appearances by party heavyweights on the network the Democrats had once shunned.

Last Sunday, Sen. Barack Obama stopped the ‘Obama Watch’ clock at 772 days when he was questioned by Chris Wallace on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ And Sen. Hillary Clinton chatted amiably with Bill O’Reilly for a two-part interview on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ broadcast Wednesday and Thursday.

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As Times staff writer Matea Gold ...

... reported on Friday, the Dems have been dissing Fox News Channel for months. The party’s liberal base has bashed the network as a ‘Republican mouthpiece’ (just as GOP supporters -- and some Obama backers -- contended that CNN stood for ‘Clinton News Network’). The Congressional Black Caucus and Fox even had to cancel plans to broadcast a presidential debate when none of the Democratic presidential contenders would show up.

But that’s all over now.

‘Your audience is important to us,’ Dean, who hadn’t appeared with Wallace for almost 19 months, said when asked about the sudden spate of Democrats on Fox. ‘A lot of your audience are working-class Democrats, the kind of people who will vote either way, and we’d like them to vote Democrat.’

Wallace followed up by asking whether Dean had second thoughts about the Democratic boycott of the network.

‘No, I think it was the right thing to do, because there are some things in the news department that have really been shockingly biased, and I think that’s wrong,’ Dean replied.

But, he added, ‘we shouldn’t punish the viewers of Fox by staying away.’

-- Leslie Hoffecker

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