Well it was definitely nothing like Time or Newsweek would have you believe. The median age at the Denver Dean Meetup was probably around 40. It was pretty white with a fair number of Latinos, but otherwise it looked like a very good cross-section of America. Definitely not the bunch of college kids and hippies much of the beltway is clinging to. (Why is that image so appealing to them?) There were about half a dozen college-age people in the packed crowd of about 100 (one of two in Denver tonight--the group outgrew its home after last month).

It's really stunning to see this many people eager to be actively involved eight months before our caucus. Gephardt would be lucky to draw this many people if he appeared in person. It's really quite extraordinay. I've never seen a movement grow this big, this fast and this energized in my lifetime of involvement in politics.

If you're looking for the DEAN NEWS CLEARINGHOUSE:

Click here or scroll down and click on the big pic of Dean in the left column.

And if you're sharing the state of Colorado with me, local info is here.

(P.S. I skipped the early meetups, because as a journalist, I thought I needed to remain neutral. Well, that was out the window about a month ago. But then I was up to my ears getting the news clearinghouse set up. So there I finally was tonight. In the flesh.)

Conan the governor. Please don't let it happen.

He announced on a taping of Jay Leno. How appropriate. One cheesebag to another.

NYT story here.

Go Arianna go!

Boy, it would be funny to watch her whip him. I don't know if she could pull it off, but it sure would be sweet to see.

It's for real, she's running.

I wonder what her chances are. I have no idea how to call this one.

I could see it happening, though. She's the kind of person that can stir up real enthusiasm. She's incredibly smart, incredibly funny and has come around to extremely reasonable positions that sound like a good fit for the California electorate. Pretty powerful combination.

And she had enough celebrity status to announce on the Today Show. (So sorry about the posting delay. She said she was going to announce at 10:30 PDT in South Central. So I kept waiting till then to check the wires, and then I got distracted, because I get distracted by everything.)

Early stories from AP and San Jose Mercury News. More info at her new website.

Oh, and Diane Feinstein announced she's definitely out. (So she says, though this one sounds more convincing. The AP story has some details on that as well.)

Great. Now Cuomo is urging Gore to jump back in.

No, really, and it's Mario, not Perry.

I'm sorry, but what an asshole? Shouldn't he know better?

This just gets under my skin, because it is so typical of the freaking political establishment. You just can't pound some things through their thick skulls. How dense did you need to be to see that Gore would never excite the electorate before he ran. (And yes of course I was saying this in 1999. How hard was that?) After his disaster against the dufus, what more do you need? (He won a slight majority of the popular vote against a total nimrod when he had everything going for him to win a third Clinton term. Wow, great accomplishment.)

Thank God for Calvin Trillin. He made my night on Charlie Rose last week with this little observation:

"When they said about Al Gore: Well, he just has this horrifying inability to make contact with his fellow human beings, BUT ... {No emphasis I can create here can possibly capture the theatricality of how he wailed the "but."}

That pretty much said it all, but he continued, "That's like saying he's a great second baseman, but he can't make the double play, otherwise he's wonderful. Wait a minute, that's his job."

(Aside: I actually heard from a Salon blogger bragging the other day that Kerry was unexciting. Sorry dude, that's his job. Kerry is no Gore-alien, but he's got a bit of work to do in the charisma department.)

Al Gore's nomination should be laid out in textbooks as a prime example of a candidate that any fool can tell should not be running for president. And who virtually the entire contingent of beltway boys decided was the only conceivable choice for president, by virtue of holding the vice presidency, a job specifically reserved most years for presidential losers. Because those political imbeciles--and yes, in this regard, imbecile is too kind a word for them--christened him so unbeatable for the nomination that only the sleep-inducing Bradley would run against him, we were stuck with a miserable option who couldn't even beat the bumbler.

(And to a lesser extent they did the same thing with Bush, though that time it was mostly the Republican moneymen and Old Guard who refused to let McCain in when the R electorate began going wild for him. If McCain had run on the Dem side, he easily would have cast Gore aside and trounced Bush in November. But no one with any sort of appeal ran against Gore for the nom, so we were stuck with him.)

It was infuriating enough when the beltway boys foisted Bush and Gore on us the last time. Now some of them want to do it AGAIN! (God, even a Salon piece last December pegged Gore as the frontrunner for this election. I nearly choked. Even Salon. Luckily it was one of the few very-establishment editors who is no longer there.)

Luckily, Gore seems to know better, but they're determined to foist some other block of deadwood upon us instead--based on their same old tired checklist of inconsequential factors they worship.

WAKE UP! you morons in the establishment. There is a groundswell around Dean because he really ignites people. And a smaller one around Clark for similar reasons even before he has announced and has never run for office in his life. God knows, we may even witness a groundswell for Biden. (I wouldn't count on it, but who knows.) And maybe Kerry will get his act together and we'll see some real enthusiasm for him.

But the press remains grudging on Dean, and power brokers like the DLC are positively beside themselves. Time and Newsweek were finally forced to recognize his momentum this week, but only half-heartedly. Both began their stories by illustrating how his quest was probably hopeless. They came into his campaign with an agenda, and by golly and they're sticking to it. (Luckily some of the other media has been more willing to report what they're seeing, including several pieces in Slate, Salon, Dan Balz in the Washington Post and a wide assortment of other outlets.)

They'll do the same thing if and when Clark announces. They'll keep reporting his two percent poll showings as proof of his lunacy, as if his name recognition could escalate overnight. They are nursing a long, long love affair with the "conventional wisdom" they like to make fun of for its pathetic prediction rate, then immediately return to worshipping. It's pathetic, they're pathetic, why don't they just give it up? 

Why not listen to what people are actually responding to, instead of your idiotic pre-conceived notions about who ought to get elected?

This just drives me nuts.

First Time, then Newsweek, and then the really big guns . . .

THE DAILY SHOW!

So happy to see our man Dean the feature of a DS segment. They were not kind to him, but they were funny, and that's the important thing.

And, they really stuck it to the Liebweasel.

They showed yesterday's clip of Lieb saying, "[Dean] could take the Democratic party out into the political wilderness." Jon Stewart responded, "Yes, Dean could lead the Democrats into an unforgiving wilderness, where they would have no control over the White House, both houses of Congress, or the Supreme Court."

Pause, laughter. "Oh wait. Never mind. It appears they're already in the wilderness--I wonder who led the Democrats there." He puts thumb and forefinger to chin, turns to the pic-in-pic of Lieb still on the screen, and the Gore/Lieberman 2004 logo flashes on top of it. "Oh, right. We'll be right back."

The Draft-Clark people had their monthly meetups last night, which produced some rumblings in the press. Nothing big to go on yet--he said he would announce soon--but if you're watching his "campaign," you might be interested in this in the W Post, and this kinda flighty op-ed about Clark scaring the GOP.

Some pretty touching comments from the new gay bishop here. This was interesting:

Robinson said in an interview a day after his confirmation that he was more hurt by friends in the church who did not support him than by opponents who said approving him would shatter the denomination. ...

"Nobody is going to say something to me that I haven't heard before," he said.

But he said he was pained by fellow Episcopalians who told him they respected and loved him but would vote to reject him as bishop of New Hampshire at this week's Episcopal General Convention.

Robinson said he learned on a Web posting that one friend would oppose him. "It really pierced my heart. I was really undefended against it," he said.

Comcast just ran a commercial touting their "award-winning customer care."

Care? Who are they advertising to, people who have never had cable? But this was for upgrade service.

We know better, assholes. Last month I upgraded to digital (ugh!) and all my channels were screwed up. I had to call half a dozen times and pound through infinite phone trees (which had the exasperating add-on annoyance of making you wait repeatedly through admonitions to listen to all the choices and exciting offers to avoid help altogether by going to their ridiculous website). Each of the humans I got gave me different information, all of it wrong. I finally got things straight by running through all the setup options one by one and finding the one that worked.

Why don't they put the money into actually creating service instead of the impossible task of convincing us they provide it?

A well-intentioned poster on Dean's current message board just wrote:

To me, it's a silly argument. Give homosexuals the right to get a Civil Union. Let them go through marriage ceremonies in churches that will allow it. Let them call themselves married. But don't use the word "marriage" in the legislation. It makes everyone happy.

I think a lot of good-hearted straights feel this way, so let me respond:

Please let me disabuse you of that idea. I can settle for a civil union for awhile if I have to, but it sure as hell does not make me or a lot of other gays happy. How would you like to be told explicitly you can't get married, but we have this other thing set up for you?

OK, say you're up for VP at your company and they call you in and say, "We really don't think you should be allowed to be a vice president. Ever. You're categorically unworthy. But we'd like you to act like one anyway, without the title, so we're going to give you the responsibility, but call you 'civil administrator.' OK? Great."

Yeah, you'd probably slither out the door with it, but like it? Who the hell wants to be told they're unworthy? (And what do you check on all the million forms that have boxes for married/single/divorced? Married, if you've got any balls, but you'll be reminded every time that you're not, you don't quite qualify, even if you're writing yourself in.)

Titles matter, especially when given out to everyone else, but specifically excluded from one group.

A lot of us can live with the ugly compromise, but please don't kid yourself that we like it.

Attended my second press conference with the General Rosa, the new guy in charge of the Air Force Academy, yesterday. It was very brief, but just long enough to feel that same rush of sincerity and candor.

Either he's an incredibly good bullshitter, or a really good guy. There was no faking that smirk when I asked him what the new troops asked him when he briefed them yesterday, and he said something like: This was a one-sided conversation. There are times when I'm going to ask their opinions, but this wasn't one of them.

He didn't hesitate to answer it, either. Somebody trying to effect an air of openess (a key talking point at the Academy right now) might have worried about the image there. But how stupid that would be: sometimes you come in as the commander and order the troops to do some things, sometimes it's a give and take session. He wasn't about to fake that, and the smile on his face expressed everything.

Some people you just know you can trust from the moment they open their mouth. My early instincts are usually on the money about that. And I really trust this guy. Please don't let me be wrong.

Could somebody track down Charlie Rose's producer for me please?

Great, we need to have a little chat. Great show you've got going, nothing even close to it on the air right now. Architecture, books, politics, even sports, Charlie can handle just about anything.

Except pop culture. No more pop culture on this show, ever, do you hear me? It's like watching your parents try to deconstruct The Rammones. Tonight he had Dave Matthews, for the full hour, I believe, which was really neat, because he was convinced Dave was really hip. And he also seemed to be under the impression he was Mozart. And Dave seemed to think he was Socrates.

Please don't ask me for specifics; was a rerun--yes, the first showing wasn't embarrassing enough!--and I cringed badly enough the first time, couldn't put myself through that again. I actually enjoyed a few of Dave Matthews' songs until I watch this the first time. Still love Crash Into Me, but I have to disassociate it from the singer.

The worst show of the year is always the night before the Grammys. He gets together a panel of aging rock critics mixed with young airhead critics, who never have the heart to break it to him that the Grammys are a joke. The full hour, he takes the whole thing seriously, and they never let on once. Second worst show of the year is probably the Emmys. Same scenario, slightly less pathetic awards.

Movies, he can hold his own. OK, he can have movies, but we draw the line there. No more exceptions, there's just no need to keep humiliating the guy.

Update: Had to move this comment from Mike Ditto up here: Sort of like when Homer Simpson says he just wants to win an award for once (employee of the month I think), and someone reminds him that he won a Grammy. His response: "I mean I want an award that's worth winning!"