Then there's the DLC's backing of Joe Lieberman. While there's something admirably loyal about the group sticking with an old friend and ally, it also shows an apparent resistance to an honest assessment of the facts on the ground. While spending over $4 million in the first half of this year, the Lieberman campaign has watched its candidate -- leading with 21 to 27 percent of the Democratic vote in January, depending on the poll -- drop to between 16 and 21 percent. Lieberman began the year with every possible advantage in terms of name recognition and institutional support -- advantages that Dean lacked -- and yet, today, Democratic and Republican strategists alike say they find it extremely difficult to see a way clear to the nomination for Lieberman. The stiffness of the competition, the nature of the primary electorate, and the primary calendar all work against him. Meanwhile, some seasoned political observers now believe Dean has a shot at winning not just New Hampshire, but Iowa -- a combination no non-incumbent Democratic candidate has won since 1976.

Likewise, the John Edwards campaign -- which Reed has advised on education and economic policy -- has spent $3.8 million and watched its national standing decline from 12 or 14 percent in January, depending on the poll, to 6 or 4 percent. Neither campaign is positioned to win Iowa or New Hampshire, and Edwards remains in the single digits even in South Carolina, where he was born.

In contrast, Dean has spent $3.99 million and gone from 3-4 percent to 10-12 percent in national polls, and from nowhere to second or tied for first, depending on the poll, in New Hampshire and Iowa. And now comes news that California, too, is trending his way.

Though it is still early in the Democratic contest, by any measure it's already clear that either the DLC candidates are campaigning less effectively than the ex-governor of Vermont, or that their messages simply do not have the same appeal as Dean's. Notes McGovern: "I think some of the people who are so concerned about where they are going to be positioned in November may lose sight of the fact that you won't win in November if you can't even get through March."

The only serious threat to Dean's campaign comes from Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who has spent $4.88 million to basically stay in place in New Hampshire and move up a bit in Iowa over the past six months. Dean critics portray Kerry as a less exciting, but more electable candidate. "The Democrats would be much better off with a blander, more faceless, less exciting candidate -- Kerry, Gephardt or even Lieberman (perhaps with Edwards, Florida Sen. Bob Graham, or retired Gen. Wesley Clark as running mate) -- than they would be with a fiery, controversial Dean," wrote John Judis in Salon. This analysis is especially unfair to Kerry. Kerry is not the leader in New Hampshire because he is the bland, unexciting, unobjectionable party favorite. Kerry is leading because he is running an aggressive, smart campaign that was first out of the gate in January with a strong operation, has spent wisely, and has expanded ahead of the rest of the pack into multiple states. Kerry has proven himself a surprisingly personable and adept one-on-one campaigner, and his campaign has shown flexibility in responding to the challenge Dean has posed. Meanwhile Gephardt has tried to ratchet up his rhetoric to compete with Kerry and Dean and to avoid the fate that befell him in 1988, when he learned that "bland and tepid won't cut it," according to Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post.

Worth noting too is that Dean, as abrasive as he is, manages to get away with things no other candidate can. If you prick a straw man, does he not bleed? Well, no. As long ago as 1995, the Vermont press found itself confounded by "Dean's Teflon characteristics." The governor was able to alienate virtually the entire state at one point or another and yet win reelection four times. In May, critics said he wasn't being held to the same standards as the other candidates. Since then, he has been. And he's survived a poor debate performance in South Carolina, the "mean Dean" meme, public spats with Kerry and Graham, apologizing for those spats, his son's arrest, a controversial "Meet the Press" appearance, ongoing comparisons to McGovern, and a travel schedule that has him out on the road 26 days out of 30. Instead of being hindered by any of the criticisms or stresses he faces, though, Dean has kept going and continued to draw new supporters, increase fundraising, and get his message out. But like all Teflon people -- such George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan -- he drives his critics crazy.

The Dean campaign may yet stall out of its own accord -- if, for example, it mistakes the candidate's ability to maneuver past problems for the absence of any need to fix them, or if, as time passes, his supporters no longer find his bluntness as refreshing, or if, come January, they find his policy proposals wanting. And meanwhile, the DLC attacks of this spring and summer will work their evil magic, you may be certain. They will weaken the eventual Democratic nominee -- whether it is Dean, Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards or some other candidate  and increase the chances that the nominee will lose to Bush.

But in the end, victory might well go to the boldest candidate, despite the carping of the cautious and centrist. "Americans don't vote for someone who has positioned himself in the center," says Curtis Gans, former director of the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. "They vote for a human being who they trust to help them solve their problems."

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