If you're a Deaniac, you know exactly what that means. If not, it means it's time for an agressive money drive at the Dean blog. They're shooting for $5 million in ten days, to close out the quarter. Expectations are that they'll blow the other campaingns away again.

They'll be charting the progress all week on a baseball-bat-shaped donation-thermometer over at the Dean blog, and the troops tend to go into a frenzy inside the comment threads during this period, particularly as the period comes to a close.

Check it out some time this week. It's a lot of fun and can be enlightening. And it's a very bright group posting over there in the comment threads. You won't be dissappointed.

The newsweeklies have spoken (posting their covers this morning), and Wes Clark did not pull a twofer like Dean on Aug 3, but he did grab one of the coveted covers, still quite a feat for a brand-new campaign.

Newsweek asks "Who is this G.I.?" Cover and index here (only good this week), and Howard Fineman's cover story here. (And the poll story here.)

Time leads with "The Reagan Letters," claiming they provide vast new insight into the bozo who saddled us with so much debt, but ran a large lengthy feature, The General Jumps In.

(At least on its website, Clark gets better play than Reagn. It's online cover page (good this week only as well) leads with a great big pic and headline on Clark that dwarfs the little Reagan cover squeezed off to the side.)

Well this certainly has to exceed Wesley Clark's wildest imagination. Just two days into the race, he's shot all the way into first among Dems in a Newsweek poll. He also comes to within 4 points of Bush in a head-to-head matchup. (That's terrible standing for an incumbent this far out.)

The Newsweek intro:

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark may have only entered the presidential race on Thursday, but he is already the Democratic frontrunner, according to a new NEWSWEEK poll.

CLARK WON SUPPORT from 14 percent registered Democrats and democratic leaners, outpacing former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (12 percent), Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman (12 percent), Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (10 percent) and Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt (8 percent).

Looks like he really is going to shake up this race. Assuming he does a better job campaigning than the last two wobbly days.

And Dean has finally accomplished his long steady ris to the top of the rest of the pack, now tied with a fading Lieb. The Clark campaign is flush with media attention and sudden legitimacy, but still pretty untested. If he falters, Dean appears more and more inevitable.

It really is looking like it could become a two-man race between these two. That is just unbelievable. It's so damn rare to find a presidential politician I can really admire and be proud of--and they're usually grasping away at the bottom. To have two in the same election to choose from, and potentially have them turn out to be the two will will choose from . . .

That's a first in my lifetime. I'm ecstatic. And I think either one is going to beat the pants off of Shrub. Can't wait to be proud of my president again.