Who's YEAAARRRGGGHHH!!!-ing now?

Scream this, bitchez!

A little over two years ago, I went to a Meetup at Panera Bread in Paramus, NJ, to work on the campaign of the former governor of Vermont. I'd seen him on Press the Meat very early in the year, and realized that I was going to go once more into the breach of politics.

For all the heartbreak that John Kerry and Dick Gephardt caused me when they pooled their resources to run negative ads against Dean in Iowa and knock him out of the race, I wouldn't trade the last 2-1/2 years for anything. Because of my involvement with the Dean campaign, I made new friends, I started this blog, and now I've seen what I hope is an end to the relentless march towards fascism of the Bush years and a stop to the theocratic aims of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade. And it's the man in the photograph who deserves our thanks. Rahm Emmanuel can hog the spotlight all he wants to; he's just a Terry McAuliffe K-Street-sucking clone hack. No, it was Howard Dean who realized that people on Montana and Virginia and Missouri and Ohio and even Kansas want the same things the rest of us want -- jobs, a good education for their kids, health care, and security -- all things this Administration has taken from them. It was Howard Dean who decided that we don't have to be branded as "red" or "blue", that Democratic values are American values.

I'm so proud of Howard Dean today.

So is Joe Conason:

Despite all the complaints and demands directed at him over the past 18 months, Dean stuck to his principles. He and his supporters in the netroots movement believed that their party needed to rebuild from the ground up in every state, including many where the party existed in name only. These Democrats prefer to think of their party as one of inclusion and unity. They openly disdain the divisive strategies of the Republicans who have so often used racial, regional and cultural differences to polarize voters.

And they believe that relying on opportunistic attempts to grab a few selected states or districts as usual -- rather than establishing a real presence across the country -- conceded a permanent structural advantage to the Republicans that would only grow more durable with each election cycle.

Breaking that advantage would be costly and difficult, as Dean well realized, but it had to be done someday, or the Democrats would fulfill Karl Rove's dream of becoming a permanent minority party -- or fading away altogether. Against the counsel of party professionals, whose long losing streak has done little to diminish their influence, the new chairman began the process of re-creating the Democratic Party in 2005. And contrary to the gossip and subsequent press reports, he succeeded in raising $51 million last year, about 20 percent more than in 2003 and a party record for an off year.

Much of that money was spent in ways that obviously paid off on Tuesday, including the 2005 election of Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine in Virginia -- where Jim Webb's upset victory over incumbent Sen. George Allen overturned Republican control of the Senate. Several million dollars was spent on rebuilding the party's national voter files, yet another essential sector in which the Republicans have enormous technological superiority.

Less obvious but equally significant was the spending on hundreds of organizers and communications specialists -- and their training -- in every state. In some places this meant taking the chains off locked, dusty offices that had seen no real activity in years; in others, it meant bailing the state party out of literal bankruptcy and convening meetings in counties where party activists had given up.

In Indiana, among the reddest states north of the Mason-Dixon line, the Democratic National Committee placed two field organizers and a new party communications director on the ground a year before the midterm elections. While that doesn't sound like a very impressive assault on a Republican stronghold, those few organizers created a party presence and started preparing for battle in vulnerable congressional districts. Suddenly the Republicans had to deal with ground opposition where traditionally they had faced no field operation at all -- not only in Indiana but in deep-red Idaho, Wyoming, Kentucky and Nebraska, too.

The Democrats didn't win in all those districts, of course, although they did enjoy several unexpected victories. What Dean and his organizers created, however, was an environment that allowed insurgents and outliers as well as the party's chosen challengers to ride the national wave of revulsion against conservative rule. That enterprise, in turn, surprised and overwhelmed the Republican capacity to respond. Faced with many more viable challenges than anticipated, the Republicans made mistakes in allocating resources -- and were forced to defend candidates in districts that are usually safe.

For now, Dean has reached a peaceful accommodation with his internal critics and enemies, many of whom were motivated by his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq and his support from the unruly netroots. Debate will continue over the wisest national strategy for 2008. Should Democrats continue to pursue the 50-state strategy, even in the difficult terrain of the deep South? Or should they seek to consolidate and expand the gains made this year in the mountain states and the Midwest?

Ultimately, the party's presidential nominee will make that decision. In the meantime, the party chairman has won the argument he started last year. Rebuilding the Democratic Party in every state is as much a matter of pragmatism as principle. There would have been much less for the Democrats to celebrate on Election Night if Howard Dean hadn't been so "crazy" -- and so persistent.

History will be the ultimate judge, of course, but right now it looks like the infamous "Dean Scream" will be remembered generations from now, not as the last breath of a dying campaign, but the birth cry of a revitalized party.