I think Dean is not as much of a gift to the GOP as a lot of people think.

He's articulate, smart, really not all that left-wing, and not namby-pamby when it comes to a controversy.

It would be wrong to underestimate the fellow.

He doesn't have a party to lead. Just fragments of interests groups.

The inability to bolster faux populist, race, and class warfare politics with streams of checks and programs, compounded by the realities of our post 9/11 world, has forced the Democrats to fall back on selling ideas.

Theirs don't work.

Putting Dean in the chair is as eloquent an admission of that fact as I can imagine.

I look for a lot of Dems to decline running for reelection in 2006. All to "spend more time with their families", of course.

He's articulate, smart, really not all that left-wing, and not namby-pamby when it comes to a controversy.

It's going to be interesting when the groups that claim to have 'bought' him try to exercise their so-called ownership rights.