Reply #10: Good to hear. I'm glad establishment Dems like Schumer are seeing

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that, and saying so. That's EXACTLY what Dean is doing. Building locally, at the grassroots level. The positions that - as one DUer here recently said - are positions "nobody cares about" like school boards and such.

LOOK, GUYS: THAT is how ralph reed and those schmucks who now run our country did it. THEY started locally and built by grabbing victories in little bitty local races that nobody cared about or paid attention to. From THAT, they were able to build a power base, and a farm team whose members were already in the system and could seek more prominent positions in later elections - because they had a springboard from the little nothing seats (that nobody cared about) they'd won first. From there, they were able to rise through the ranks and build their own organizations and funding/support structures and alliances with others of their ilk, and look where they are now.

Granted, it took 'em awhile. But they did it. At the rate we're going, I'd suspect it wouldn't take us 30 or 40 years as it did with them, but this is a very slow process nonetheless.

Another WUNNNNNNNNNNNNderful thing Dean has done is to boldly go where no Democrats had gone before - to visit lonely, neglected Democrats in the Sunbelt and the buy-bull belt, places like Louisiana where our colleagues had been left alone to starve and thirst because some other state was considered more important. Those Democrats who kept screaming "HEY! WE'RE here too!" were finally heard. I forget where I read it but the fundraising and attendance at one of those meetings where Dean finally showed up to meet-n-greet with the neglected ones was the hot ticket in town, standing room only, and record-breaking money-raising where they had next to NOTHING in their warchests. He breathed new life into these withering groups to whom no other big-name Dems had paid much attention. For example, in the waning days of the last campaign, why did Kerry keep cycling back to Wisconsin and Ohio and those other places in the upper midwest over and over and over and over and over, when there were Democrats in North and South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and elsewhere who were crying for him to come talk to them. WHY? Because they were already written off - assumed lost. WHAT A WASTE!!! Why should they bother if they're being treated as nobodies who don't matter? DEAN HAS CHANGED ALL THAT. A few blessed drops of water on those little neglected acorns down there in the South and we'll be sprouting some mighty oak trees in a few years.

Yes, it'll take some time. But it is the work of the saints, and of the salvation of this country.

HOWARD DEAN UNDERSTANDS THAT.

Thank GOD!!!!

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And by the way, I'm one of those angry Dems who attended those "Listening Events" held by the DNC last year, when they were considering a new chair to replace Terry McAuliffe. They had all these other people running. We showed up in downtown L.A. at the meeting there, and there were probably three or four HUNDRED people cramming into that meeting hall, every seat taken, people standing along all the aisles and spilling out into the outer room. We all felt the same, with rare exception. In fact, it was something like 396 to 4 demanding that Dean be named the new chair. People stood up and threatened never to donate another dime to the Democrats unless they started fighting back, listening to us activists on the front lines, and doing something besides bending over and saying to bush and his fellow bullies - "thank you, sir, may I have another?" We pushed for Dean because we knew what he stood for, and that he was a fighter, and because we recognized how badly we needed him.

And we won. We ALL will, eventually, thanks to the work, the groundwork he's laid, and the guts and backbone he's shown to us all.