The room is called to order. After Turnball and WLF New York co-chair Jodi Schwartz call for "regime change" in the U.S., McAuliffe takes the stage and discusses how great things are for the Democrats -- the DNC is out of debt, they purged the millions of incorrect voter addresses from DNC computers, there are five more Democratic governors than two years ago, were it not for the untimely deaths of Sens. Mel Carnahan, D-Mo., and Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., the Senate would be theirs. The war goes essentially unmentioned.

McAuliffe does call the campaign to defeat Bush "a crusade that we're all on," a jarring comment to make, not only because it was made in a room full of Democrats gearing up to buy matzah.

McAuliffe, pleading neutrality, allows himself to call Dean "a spectacular individual who's brought energy, enthusiasm, and excitement to this party." He recalls Dean's appearance at February's DNC winter convention where Dean "lit up that crowd" by "talking about what we fight for as Democrats." (That speech, of course, began with Dean pointedly asking, "What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq?")

Dean makes no similar inquiries this evening. His one allusion to the war is to slam a Bush administration move to cut veterans' health benefits. "Most Americans would prefer making sure our folks who are fighting are treated properly when they come home!" he says. He says he wants to bring in a foreign policy that makes "Americans walking down the street proud to be Americans again." But he focuses on domestic issues -- a balanced budget, universal health insurance, abortion, fully funding special education, correcting the rightward tilt of the U.S. Supreme Court.

He sends a shout-out to Hope. Since this is a DNC event and the DNC doesn't take a position on candidates before it has an official nominee, Lenore Blitz, a member of the Kerry for President finance committee, tells me that she finds this inappropriate. Blitz won't tell me how much Kerry has raised other than "we've done very well; we're going to be very competitive."

The Middle East comes up once -- but not Iraq. A woman says that Bush has been extremely supportive of Israel and wants to know Dean's position.

"I don't think the president has been very supportive of Israel," the former governor says. "If you want to be supportive of Israel you need peace in the Middle East." He says Bush is the first president in generations not engaged in the struggle to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinian territories. He goes on to slam Bush's mollycoddling of the Saudis' funding of madrassas and terrorist groups like Hamas. A new item on Dean's call for the president to develop an energy policy -- he now talks up ethanol, the controversial gasoline substitute beloved mostly by business leaders in that key primary state of Iowa.

Dean continues, straining to raise his voice above the cacophony of a raucous party in the back room. Hope dramatically whispers to an older woman: "He can win. He can win. Trust me."

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