I have hesitated before suggesting to this crowd that Dean is indeed transformative. After all, he's a mid-stream Democrat. The importance of Dean, however, really can't be overstressed so long as we keep in mind that his is a modest revolution.
A lot of you have experience with various kinds of campaigns and organizing. If you go to a local campaign office, understand that this is the last election cycle that things will look so familiar. Paper campaign literature, cardboard signs and doorbelling will soon be reserved for poor neighborhoods only. Most campaigning will become database wars. The two-tiered system of old-fashioned, clipboard and bumper sticker campaigns that serve big, soft money and centralized mass media behemoths will die. So long as small donations remain the key to campaign financing, candidates will be forced to utilize all the elements of information and communication technology. The Republican takover of the overlooked AM bandwidth was really the beginning of this.
Demographics are also going to change politics as government budgets become tighter.
The point is that these factors will combine to make the Terry McAuliffes of this world into dinosaurs and Dean will only hasten that welcome process. McAuliffe and his minions know it and they will fight Dean tooth and nail. For one election cycle we can forget how Dean stands on the issues and focus on how he is making his stand and against whom - both in the Democratic and Republican parties. Note that I am a person who voted for Nader and would proudly do it again if I had the vote to do over. But the anti-war left (and gay voters) are Dean's core constituency (after all, Vermont doesn't have as many people as most large cities). We on the Net-communicating left have never had such an instrumental role in a campaign. We may not get this type of chance again.
I couldn't compromise in 2000 because Gore represented the worst of the Dems so I understand the Kucinich tendency out there. I am not telling you that Dean is anything but a thin reed for us. I am still persuaded that he is the antidote to Bush in '04.
peace,
boddi