Dean as Bee to Democratic Party

Why the Democratic nomination process has been such a beautiful thing.

The one who survives the process and collects the wisdom of his opponents into a single, smart platform might really be able to bring Karl Rove some pain. If indeed he does expire, Howard Dean, blessedly, will not have been the only Democratic candidate to sting before he died.

"Frustrated. Tired. Unhappy": Those are the three words New Hampshire's feisty Democratic chair, Kathy Sullivan, offers to describe her party in the wake of the recount that Al Gore should have won. She recalls the week things felt even worse: when Democratic senators refused to filibuster the nomination of John Ashcroft for attorney general. "The Democrats in Washington had a moment in which they could have taken a stand and said: 'No. We're not going to let this happen.' And they didn't do it."

Then came the disastrous 2002 off-year elections. "Such a bad year for us. People just felt down. Hollowed out.

"And here comes Howard Dean. And I think what Dean has done has in some respects given the party its swagger back."

And so, over a quarter of a club sandwich in a Nashua hotel coffee shop, she begins a peroration of her own. "And we said: No. We can beat this guy. Because he's wrong on Iraq. Because he's wrong on the environment. Because he's wrong on education. And Dean just starts getting people excited again. . . . And for that, no matter what happens to Howard Dean, his running for the president did a good thing for this party. It just got everybody energized again."

He might not get there. But if the Democrats make it to that Promised Land on Pennsylvania Avenue, Dean will have been the one who led us out of the desert in the first place.