The doctor is in – in Bush's face!

Having raised more money than any Democrat in the second quarter of this year, having attracted more volunteers, in its estimation, than any campaign in history, and having reached the magical "top tier" status in the eyes of most media, the Dean campaign is now looking to take on Dubya himself. Trippi describes the next phase of the Dean campaign this way: "Over the next six months," he says, "we must be in George Bush's face."

U.S. News has learned that the Dean campaign will spend between $100,000 and $200,000 to put up a new television commercial running this week in the unlikely (and probably unwinnable) state of Texas. In the ad, which Dean taped last Wednesday in Council Bluffs, Iowa, he wears a blue, open-necked work shirt, faces the camera, and says, "I want to change George Bush's reckless foreign policy, stand up for affordable healthcare, and create new jobs . . . . Has anybody really stood up against George Bush and his policies? Don't you think it's time somebody did?"

The pitch, which is airing only in Austin (at the same time President Bush is vacationing in Crawford, 87 miles away), is to some extent a stunt but on another level is intended to send the message that Dean will cede no ground to Bush anywhere. "We want to go right into the belly of the beast," Trippi says.

In Dean's "coming out" speech at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting in February, his very first line to the party elite (after a weak joke about maple syrup) was: "What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq." It was a body blow that Dean followed with a flurry of hooks and jabs, before ending with: "We're going to change this party! And then we're going to change this country! And we're going to take back the White House!" Several in the audience noted (with no small amount of alarm) that Dean had put changing the party first on his list.

Dean's road map to victory is this: After he wins first or second place in the Iowa caucuses (January 19) and first place in the New Hampshire primary (January 27), the supporters of the defeated candidates will coalesce around him, which, combined with Dean's own army of loyalists, will make him unstoppable. But his opponents are sounding the alarm early. They say that while there might be a theoretical opportunity for enough angry hard-core lefties, McCainiacs, Perotistas, Greens, and Deanie Boppers to put Dean over the top in the primaries, he will be a sitting duck for George Bush, defender of America, who will use Dean's antiwar stance to paint him as a squishy-soft liberal who will not defend the nation in time of crisis. "Dean is a real and enormous threat," says one highly respected Democratic leader who is not aligned with any campaign. "He won't fold, and he won't do something stupid and peak in August. He has only growth potential. If he wins Iowa and he wins New Hampshire, who is going to stop him? Nobody. But Karl Rove (Bush's chief political adviser) and his crowd are dying to face Dean. It is going to be pretty tough for an antiwar candidate to win in 2004."

Howard Dean has heard this before–he says he is not antiwar, just anti-Iraq war–and he believes voters will not be scared off. Sitting in the unpretentious Café Piccolo, a short drive from his campaign headquarters, and eating a bowl of soup and an oatmeal cookie (not, he admits, the most nutritious lunch an internist could have), Dean says, "Average Americans, who are concerned with working and feeding their families and are not that interested in politics, think this is a bunch of politicians who don't have much to say. Average Americans vote for the person they like, and they vote for the person they trust."

"This president promised that he would be a uniter, not a divider, and that was a lie!" Dean thundered recently in a speech in Concord, N.H., even though most candidates go out of their way to avoid using "lie" or "liar."

"I think being likable is a big deal," he says. "Part of that likability stuff is not having a big smile and a glad hand; it's about having people respect you. That's very important. In fact, that's more important than having them like you."

"Anger alone is never going to get you elected president; it's not going to fuel a campaign," Dean says. "My campaign is about hope, hope for a community, hope for a country where all of us are going to be included again, and that's really fueling this campaign much more than the anger is."

"I find him very, very refreshing," says Joe Mathews, 53, who owns a travel agency in Manchester, Vt., and, as a Republican, has always voted against Dean "out of habit." But Mathews says he will vote for Dean for president because he admires the fiscal conservatism Dean displayed in 11 years as governor. "What the rest of the country is starting to find out," he says, "is Dean is not particularly left wing. And as far as checkbook issues, he is to the right of George Bush, because if it isn't in the bank, Dean doesn't spend it."

I think we were all sort of hoodwinked by George Bush," Dean says. "Everything he said he was going to do in the campaign he did the opposite of. He is a divider, not a uniter, there is nothing compassionate about him or about his presidency, and he just couldn't give a damn about the American people."

"We started out with seven people and $157,000," Trippi says, clutching his left side where he has either torn a muscle or broken a rib, "and nobody ever heard of us. Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards, Lieberman, they had millions in the bank, access to the best staffs, and massive name ID. So if we can get this far against them, what makes anybody think Karl Rove couldn't run circles around them? It is great that Karl Rove wants us, because we want George Bush. We are just afraid that at the last minute, the Republicans are going to switch him out for a moderate." And if it didn't hurt too much, Trippi would laugh.

Some weeks ago, Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe privately asked each candidate to drop out of the race when it became "mathematically clear" that the party had selected a nominee, a date he estimated would be no later than March 9 of next year. McAuliffe asked each to release his or her delegates and endorse the presumptive winner before the convention. (EL - This really shows McAuliffe is soo yesterday. Incredibly stupid. Someone who likes to fold and play dead.)

Dean refused. "It's not going to happen," he told U.S. News. "I'm not deliberately going to sit it out [in order to] have an uncontentious convention. I certainly want the Democratic nominee to win and I hope it's me, but this is about building the party, and I'm building the party and I'm in for the long run."