After finishing a distant second in New Hampshire this week, the campaign's spin was that Dean was making a comeback. But that was called into question -- sharply, and unexpectedly -- on Wednesday.

According to staffers, Dean held a meeting with campaign workers in which he announced that there was no money to pay staff at the beginning of February. He said that the campaign had $3 million in the bank, but that it had also racked up $3 million in debt that needed to be paid off. A senior aide confirmed the meeting, but not the numbers in question.

Even before the Iowa caucus, the Dean campaign spent aggressively in states with later contests in order to drive home the advantage of being the only "national" campaign. In Iowa, the campaign spent millions on advertising and on a massive organization of paid staff and volunteers in custom, bright-orange watch caps. But that spending did more to attract press attention than actual caucus-goers, and Dean finished third. And in New Hampshire, Dean outspent his closest rival by hundreds of thousands of dollars to air an ad blitz that helped to reverse damage to his campaign from Iowa.

"[Money] has nothing to do with the management changes at all," Dean said on an evening conference call with reporters.

According to some campaign sources, it was a change that Dean had contemplated since the Iowa loss, if not before. But it came to a head this week. "I think the governor just kind of had it with losing," said one campaign source who asked to remain anonymous. "He was itching to make a move, but he made a very good call post Iowa to stand pat. It was just time."

Whatever his ultimate reasons, Dean had seen enough, and decided to bring in Neel. Trippi, upon hearing the news, handed in his resignation Wednesday and left.

On Wednesday night, Dean said Neel was brought in to be a "centralizing" force in the campaign. Others suggested the appointment is meant to impose discipline on the reeling campaign, and, just as importantly, the appearance of discipline. Neel is a close friend of Gore's and a longtime aide; he was also a central figure during the 2000 campaign. But while Neel's lobbyist background only confirmed Gore's image as a Washington insider to those who wanted change, his corporate leanings are unlikely to harm Dean's outsider credentials -- and may even bolster his campaign with centrists.

Clearly, though, the timing is less than ideal.

When Kerry's campaign seemed moribund in November -- he overhauled his staff and attracted a ream of critical coverage. But Trippi's departure comes just a week before a series of contests in which Dean must either win something or risk going into free-fall.

At such a crucial juncture, it's not clear whether Trippi's departure will dent the seemingly infinite enthusiasm of the legions of "Deaniacs" who propelled him to the front of the field in 2003. Trippi, a veteran political consultant who came to the Dean campaign from a private-sector job with an Internet company, was the visionary behind DeanforAmerica.com, and was something of a hero to many of those supporters.

Shortly after news of Trippi's departure broke, "Brad in Mass" posted this comment on Dean's Blog for America: "Man. This is genuinely, truly harsh. I really, truly do not want you to go, Joe."

The danger is also that supporters loyal to Trippi will come to see him as a scapegoat, as some strategists clearly believe him to be. "I guess it was Joe Trippi who told Dean to act hysterical and say dumb things every day," Wolfson said sarcastically. "If there was ever a situation where a candidate should have fired himself, it was this one."

But Dean expressed no hostility for his former campaign guru. Instead, he said he regrets Trippi's decision, and hopes to convince him to come back and work for the campaign "after he's thought it through."

Trippi, for his part, also sought a graceful exit. "Howard Dean is the guy who is going to fight for the country for real change and [I] hope people stick with him," Trippi said as he left campaign headquarters with his wife, Kathy Lash, who also worked for Dean.

"I'm out of the campaign, but I'm not out of the fight," he said in an account reported by the Associated Press. "We need to change America."

Can Dean recover? Maybe. Even without Trippi, he has a core of supporters that will never abandon him. And while the other campaigns will be fighting each other all over the country in the Feb. 3 states, the Dean camp will hope to rebound by focusing on and winning delegate-rich states like Michigan and Washington on Feb. 7. As John Kerry can attest, comebacks have been built on less.

On the conference call, Dean discussed the strategy of patience. "It's going to be a long, long war of attrition, and we're preparing for that," he said.

But it's an untested theory, and time is running out.

Laura McClure contributed to this report.

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