Reply #42: I agree Dean ruffled feathers during the primaries but...

[jswordy]

...he has been working with the party chairs at the state level during this process, and their fear of him (as fed to them by spin from the entrenched apparatchiks) is diminishing, as they see him in person and realize he is not the wild-eyed radical he has been painted as. It is really quite amazing, to see them see the logical and rational Howard Dean so many of us knew already was his core personality, and to see that man in person and with all the spin set aside.

I agree, all that said, that he very likely will not get the chair. The Bill and Hillary forces are working fervently to make sure that does not happen. For we Dean supporters, it is a near deja vue experience to watch this process.

I also agree that if Dean does not get the chair, the party will likely split along an activist leaders/party followers line. I will be among those who will follow the "Dean faction," the activist leaders, which I see evolving as a more limber, fighting weight version of the bloated main party. Where the main party's priority is softness of rhetoric, the lowest common denominator, and not making waves -- a kind of coccoon of lite-speak, the Dean faction will be about taking no prisoners, expressing the stripped-down core values of the party in a plain-spoken way, reaching out to voters shunned by the party at present, and running candidates at every level with the eye on winning as the goal. Those candidates then will become the "farm team" for our next generation of national Democratic leaders.

I'll be in that camp.