Dean's legacy in Iowa and New Hampshire

From diarist tea in the harbor at Daily Kos:

Governor Dean talked of a Great American Restoration. Maybe now we are going to finally get it, for the Obama-Edwards win is also, in every real way, Howard Dean's victory, for it is his vision of American democracy that has prevailed. The Governor realized the answer to our political dilemma was to change the dynamics of the "game" by getting discouraged voters who have dropped out to return to participating in the political process. This is the philosophical basic of the 50-State Program and the new precinct leader system, and the antithesis of the political culture of triangulation, which seeks to merely manipulate the cutting of a shrinking pie.

Dean saw we needed to turn citizens from passive spectators, for whom politics was something they received, back into participants and the joint masters of their own destiny. Bringing in tens of thousands of new people to the caucuses – over 100,000 – is precisely what Obama and Edwards did. From all the polling, there looks to be a record turnout in New Hampshire Tuesday as well. In this sense both Obama and Edwards are true successors to the Dean campaign.

Don't forget, even Kerry was a beneficiary of the Dean Campaign. When Dean asked his supporters to vote on whether they wanted limited federal funding of his run for president, his people smartly decided to reject those funds on the faith that they could raise much more clean money by themselves. Kerry was forced to do the same thing and it turned out better for him after Dean was smeared by the media and all that support was transferred to him.

Then, sadly, Kerry let them steal the victory we all worked so hard for without raising the slightest fuss, enabling four more years of American demolition.