Dean to attend today's Meetup in Wisconsin?

Can any of our resident Badgers confirm? I suspect Dean will attend either the Milwaukee or the Madison meetup ...

If its true, it makes much more sense than my earlier repeated insistence that the Meetup in Ann Arbor. Recent polls don't look that great for our chances in Michigan:

Kerry maintained his lead in Michigan just three days before state Democrats vote in caucuses, according to a statewide Detroit News/Mitchell tracking poll.

Kerry is favored by 56 percent of the 450 likely Michigan caucus voters surveyed.

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean placed second in the poll with 12 percent support. Nearly 20 percent remain undecided.

The poll was conducted Sunday through Tuesday by The Detroit News/Mitchell Research & Communications Inc. The margin of error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Michigan Democrats will vote at party caucuses from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. About 25,000 voters already have cast ballots over the Internet or by mail.

Michigan is the first major industrial state in play, and the 128 pledged delegates at stake are the most of any contest to date.

though the Arab and the Muslim vote should hopefully come through to put us above the delegate threshold, and there's a large pool of undecideds whom we need to make our appeal to (remember: negative attacks backfire). Edwards will likely sit out Feb 7th.

The point is that Dean's only advantage is the grassroots - and the meetups are at the heart of that. Dean needs a return to roots, as it were. And Dean needs to keep looking ahead, to try and build momentum for Super Tuesday. That's been the plan the campaign has pursued and a real win in Wisconsin might make the difference.

Here's our ideal-realistic scenario:

Feb 7th: finish second in Michigan (competition: Kerry)

Feb 10th: win Virginia, finish second in Tennessee (competition: Edwards and Clark)

Feb 17th: win Wisconsin