Dr. No and the Yes Men

This article in the New York Times begins by painting Dean in a fairly positive light. He is the little known candidate who stormed upon the campaign trail.

Howard Dean is the guy who has dictated the theme of this early campaign season. Once written off as a little man from a little state, Dean has expertly framed the 2004 nomination fight as a choice between white-hot liberal rage on one side and the room-temperature promise of ''electability'' on the other. ''Democrats are furious at their own party,'' Dean says. ''They feel like the party's leaders have taken a pass.''

It does, however, seem to cast a shadow of unelectability on Gov. Dean:

The bad news for Dean's rivals, however, is that Democratic protest candidates have proved very effective at indelibly soiling whatever image the party is trying to convey at the moment. And you have to wonder if the other candidates, ensconced in Washington, have any real grasp of the grass-roots revolt that is fueling Dean's momentum. It's not surprising that the party's leaders feel like shoving Dean's stethoscope down his throat when he says they only care about sounding electable. What's harder to understand is why they seem so determined to prove him right.

I've heard this arguement and the past, and my response has generally been that Gov. Dean is not the far left liberal he is often painted as (just as the left wingers in VT who often felt frustrated). The author picks up on this theme:

If Dean ever belonged to the ''Democratic wing of the Democratic Party'' before this year, he must have kept his membership secret. During his five two-year terms as governor, Dean was proud to be known as a pragmatic New Democrat, in the Clinton mold, boasting that neither the far right nor the far left had much use for him. He signed into law a measure that legalized civil unions for gay couples, a decision that was essentially mandated by the state's Supreme Court. But he also faced opposition from the left-leaning Progressive Party in two re-election campaigns. And he forcefully upheld the rights of Vermonters to carry concealed guns wherever they went, which helped him earn an A rating from the National Rifle Association.

It writes a bit as well about the amazing take off that the governor's speach to the DNC winter meeting resulted in:

In November, Dean's campaign was getting about 50 e-mail messages a day from supporters; after Dean gave a fiery speech to the Democratic National Committee in February, which began with an indictment of the war, as many as 2,000 e-mail messages arrived in a single day. Polling data showed Dean's support shifting from white men and independents to women and younger voters. Dean raised a surprising $2.6 million in the first quarter of the year, outdoing his opponents in two of the most liberal enclaves in America: Cambridge, Mass., and Beverly Hills, Calif.

Turmoil at his Burlington headquarters reflected the leftward lurch of Dean's campaign. In April, Rick Ridder, his pragmatic campaign manager, left and was replaced by Joe Trippi, the insurgent strategist who had run Jerry Brown's 1992 campaign against Clinton.

Dean's campaign, meanwhile, has become an online juggernaut. On the Web site Meetup.com, some 24,000 Dean supporters, at last count, had scheduled monthly meetings in more than 250 American cities. ''You've heard of the silent majority?'' says Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster. ''Well, Dean represents the screaming minority.''

Overall, it's an interesting read. There's a lot more I'd post here, but I trust that many of you will read it all anyhow!