Tom McMahon, the executive director of Howard Dean’s Democracy for America group, sent out this bizarre email to supporters yesterday (53K PDF):

Listen to this one: “Dean had the oranges,” said one of the other candidates for DNC Chair recently, “but he couldn’t make orange juice.”

It might take a second to figure out, but he was talking about you.

As the race for DNC Chair heats up, the attacks on Howard Dean have been relentless, even bizarre. But Governor Dean usually isn’t the target of the attacks — you are. And, unfortunately, those attacks have been more serious than the one about oranges.

They say that you don’t really matter. That you have made no difference.

The candidate he was referring to is Donnie Fowler, who actually said this:

“The question about Dean is: While he will have a third of the vote easily, can he get to 50 percent?” said Donnie Fowler, one of Dean’s opponents. Then Fowler referred to Dean’s presidential campaign.

“Dean had the oranges,” Fowler said, “but he couldn’t make orange juice.

Contrary to McMahon’s implication, Fowler was not demeaning Dean’s supporters. He was using a metaphor to make the obvious — and correct — point that Dean couldn’t win the Democratic nomination despite having the most grassroots support and the most money going into the Iowa caucus. Ripping the quote out of context is a cheap trick.