Joe Klein's article in Time Magazine

By Anonymous -
Also see the Christian Science Monitor's nice overview of Dean. Excerpt from Klein article:
"I want a balanced budget," Howard Dean said, and the crowd at the Larkspur Ferry Terminal roared. "Imagine that!" Dean continued with a smile. "Here we are in Marin County, the last bastion of liberalism, hooting and hollering for a balanced budget." But the crowd wasn't really cheering for balanced books; it was hooting and hollering for Dean himself, who could come out foursquare for a healthy balanced diet and his supporters would find it deliriously rebellious. By recent Dean standards, the Larkspur assemblage — several hundred people — was meager. He's been greeted by 3,000 in Austin, Texas, and 1,000 in Seattle. But the very notion of unaffiliated civilians gathering to hear a candidate is increasingly rare in American politics, and the former Governor of Vermont has emerged as the one Democrat who can draw a crowd.

We are now little more than six months away from the primaries. The real campaign will probably begin on Labor Day, but the Democratic field seems to have organized itself into three tiers. The bottom tier is the vanity candidacies: Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun. The middle tier is serious candidates who have yet to catch fire: Joe Lieberman (despite high name recognition in the polls), John Edwards (despite financial support from his fellow trial lawyers and some creative speeches about specific issues) and Bob Graham. At the top are John Kerry, the party establishment's favorite; Dick Gephardt, the Midwest labor candidate. And Howard Dean.

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