{Update: original estimates were at least 10,000 attendees, but the Dean-unfriendly NY Post says 16,000 Wednesday morning, so I assume that's conservative.}

Lowell Weicker is introducing Dean right now. A few choice quotes, from a very wise man:

"I'll tell you why I want Howard Dean: He speaks the truth."

On foreign policy: "It can mean not just the respect, but the affection by the rest of the world, for the United States of America."

(If you're reading soon after I post, he's live on CSPAN2 and over the web here.)

And he just broke the million dollar mark

--just as he took the stage. Coincidence?

8:05:

He's speaking now. Very aggressive rhetoric against Bush. But seems a bit subdued. I expected more fire.

8:10:

He's got a line about foreign policy having two parts. Paraphrasing: The Berlin Wall came down because we stood up to the Soviets and because people on the other side of the wall wanted to be like America. You would be hard pressed today to find a country where people want to be like the United States.

Well put. This guy cuts to the heart of things, that's what I like about him. It's slightly overstated, but it's a crucial concept, and we're failing miserably at it. I don't think Bush or the neocons ever have the long view, and this guy does. And he can communicate it.

8:20:

All right! He's trashing Bush for supporting anti-gay bigots like Rick Santorum and Antonin Scalia. Thank you!

8:25:

"If it takes a liberal to balance the budget, we desperately need one in the white house." He's been using variations on that line for awhile, but I never tire of it.

He devoted a good passage to how he's going to win in the South. Best line (directly to Southerners): "You've been voting for Republicans for 30 years: What have you got to show for it?"

8:32:

And, out. Highly rousing ending. Now he's enthusiastically working the rope line.

8:20--Backing up:

It was about ten minutes before the ending that I noticed he was really raising the hair on the back of my neck. (In the good way.) I thought he seemed kind of sluggish and uninspiring at the beginning--maybe it was all the hype leading up to it that I expected the second coming. He seemed OK for awhile after that, but not so inspirational. No John Kennedy.

But he really crept up on me. More and more of his ideas were resonating with me, and frankly, sounding different than the typical political bullshit. Sounding more like somebody who gets what's really going on in the world and just comes right out and says it.

It was like a spicy Thai dish that doesn't seem so hot at the start, but it builds and builds until your eyes are suddenly streaming and the back of your throat is on fire.

By the last ten minutes he had me fired up to rush outside and move some mountains. And right about 8:30, he really began to drive it home:

The biggest lie that people like me tell people like you during the election season, is that if you vote for me, I'll solve all your problems. The truth is, that the power to change this country is in your hands, not mine. Abraham Lincoln said that a government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth. This president has forgotten ordinary Americans. And you have the power to take this party back and make it stand for something again.  You have the power to take this country back and fulfill the dream of Harry Truman back in 1948 when he wanted health insurance for all Americans and jobs again in this country. And we have the power to take the White House back in 2004, and that is exactly what we are going to do. Thank you very, very much. Thank you very much, cause you have that power. You have the power. You have the power. You have the power.

Very Patti Smith comeback album at the end there. I don't know how it comes across in pixels, but it was pretty powerful hearing him say it. (I didn't transcribe it all till several minutes later. Thanks God for Tivo.)

He's our man. Every time I see him I feel those twinges of doubt: Is this really the right guy? Can he carry the message home?

Better than anyone I've seen or heard in a long, long time.

Dean is due to take the stage at the big NYC rally in Bryant Park in 45 minutes (10 p.m. EDT). It's the final stop on the Sleepless Summer Tour. (And the campaign seem to have timed it so Dean will make his million-dollar fundraising goal for the 4-day trip just as he begins to speak.)

It will be broadcast on CSPAN2 and over the web here.

If you're busy watching Real World or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, never fear. I'll blog your way through it for you. Live updates, as he speaks. (I'll try not to get quite as carried away as I did with Chip & Reichen.)

Newsweek has a story dated Sept 1 up (Howard Fineman), with a fun headline and an interesting premise:

Tangled Up in His Flight Suit

For Bush, war equals good politics—so long as the war’s going well, that is

It finally starts to address the issue many of us have been clamoring about for months: That the public still supports the Iraq war, but as Howie says, "there is soggy ground beneath those numbers."

It's very late to be realizing this, and still damn weak, but that's the mainstream press, always the last to know.

What caught my eye, though, on this all-about-Dean day, was that Dean was mentioned briefly, followed immediately by this phrase, "the antiwar insurgent who is now the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination . . ."

So annoying that they're still defining him by his Iraq position (such simpletons), but wonderful that they're finally, FINALLY labeling him the frontrunner. Without reservations.

That signals the moment they turn to smash him. Hmmmmm. Have they misplayed their hand? They have been knocking him all year, so what do they do now? They need a new songbook to sing from simultaneously. Reverse tradition and praise the frontrunner? Heresy.

Can't wait to see.

Can you believe that is the headline on the Fox News site posted five minutes ago? It's the new AP story, which will soon be everywhere, but it is being posted on most sites as Dean to Air Political Ads in Six States. Fox appears to have pumped up the headline themselves.

Fox calling Dean a juggernaut. Now that is news.

And the press coverage of Dean in the last 24 hours has just exploded. In addition to the biggies, local news stories everywhere. New Reuters story just released:

Holy Cow! Democrat Dean Shocked by Campaign Crowds

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Howard Dean is the It candidate of the moment. From Rolling Stone to Modern Physician magazine, everybody wants a piece of the 2004 Democratic presidential contender.

Aboard the "Grass Roots Express," the chartered jet ferrying him coast to coast on a late summer political swing, the doctor and former governor of Vermont found himself squeezed in a center seat discussing Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with a reporter on his left and medical malpractice caps with a correspondent on his right.

German television, The New Yorker magazine and CBS' "60 Minutes II" vied for face time with the one Democratic contender to create early buzz with a sense of momentum almost five months before the first contests on the road to the White House.

Man. Last month, the press was still still full of grudging enthusiasm and back-handed compliments, even in their cover stories (especially that slime Jonathan Alter--not just slimy because of his Dean coverage, mind you, just because of his general approach). Now they have launched into full-gush mode.

Forget the million dollars in ads he's buying. He's just earned more than that from the press coverage about it.

He's totally blowing the other candidates away in exposure. And here's an interesting way it's paying off. Gephardt tried to build his campaign around a radical healthcare plan, which drew tremendous attention when it was first announced. But since then, his campaign has floundered, and coverage of him has been abysmal. And look at the results. AP just posted this story, which at least one NH TV station has already picked up:

Poll: Dean Health Plan Gets Voters' Attention

CONCORD, N.H. -- A new poll shows former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean gets the most credit among New Hampshire Democrats for proposing a plan to improve health care coverage.

In the New Hampshire for Health Care poll, 54 percent of likely Democratic voters said they've heard about Dean's health care plan, up from 41 percent two months ago. Only a quarter of voters named Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, and 18 percent named Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt.

He's getting his message across and his rivals are not. They're not even hearing about Gephardt's plan. And it just spirals in the same direction: stories about polls showing Dean's plan is most known there just increases awareness of it further.

And so it goes.

Check out the gushing about "enormous crowds" in this New York Times piece, just posted within the hour (apparently for tomorrow's paper--update: it's now on the front page of their website):

Dean Readies Ad Blitz More Than Year Ahead of Election

CHICAGO, Aug. 26 — Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont whose long-shot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination has surged to the top of several recent polls, plans to broadcast a new television commercial in six states beginning Friday and expects to raise $10.3 million during the second quarter, his campaign announced today.

It is an audacious move, coming five months before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary that begin the balloting, and just after a spring quarter in which the Dean campaign shocked the political establishment by raising more than his eight Democratic rivals — $7.6 million — much of it in small donations sent over the Internet.

The announcement came after three days in which Dr. Dean has drawn enormous crowds across the country, particularly considering the season. About 4,000 turned out in Falls Church, Va., a Washington suburb, to kick-off the so-called "Sleepless Summer" tour on Saturday evening, 300 greeted the aging Boeing 737 dubbed the "Grassroots Express" on the tarmac for a brief stop in Boise, Idaho, Sunday morning, 10,000 packed a downtown park in Seattle Sunday night, and about 1,200 rallied boisterously Monday in San Antonio, Tex.

It is a bold move, and from everything I've seen watching the campaign, it's based on two premises. The first is featured here, the second is oddly absent from the piece:

Dr. Dean has already run advertisements in Iowa, New Hampshire and Austin, Tex., where he raised nearly $50,000 at a raucous coffeehouse party on Monday afternoon. "We're going to be in nine states in August," said Steve McMahon, one of his media consultants. "It's unprecedented. It's never even been contemplated."

While most of the other nine Democrats in the field are concentration resources only in the earliest-voting states, the Dean campaign, which already has paid staff on the ground in 12 states, has acted this week as though the general election is just around the corner.

"We are a 50-state campaign," Mr. Trippi said. "This is going to happen really fast. This is going to be the most compressed primary cycle in history."

That's definitely all true. In earlier races, you would build on a NH win, raise a lot of money and build momentum in the 2-3 week gap before the next primary, and then it was only one (usually SC), and they trickled in for awhile, mostly small states. Now there are six more contests just a week after NH and they continue fast and furious with big states one after another.

Dean is now hoping to win IA/NH and be well-positioned for the six the following week. And he may need to be. Most of that so-called Round 2 is in presumably unfriendly southern country. The worst thing Dean could do would be to win a one-two near-knockout in the first two, be crowned the near-nominee by the press, then ride the momentum to do better but still shitty the following week. If he gets pummeled in all six states, the press will suddenly brand him the failed one-hit wonder and it will be wide open again at best. That's a really plausible scenario, and I've been worrying about it quite a bit lately. I think he's wise to buttress himself against it. Joe Trippi is a very wise man.

But that's the tactical, little-picture reason. I have clearly gotten the impression that they are going for something much bigger as well: money and momentum.

The Times piece says Dean will spend a million on the ads. Well, spend money to make money, how hard is that to grasp.

I bet Dean hopes to recoup nearly that million directly from the new supporters he garners from the ad. But the bigger gain comes from the time-honored piggybacking effect in marketing. Beating all his rivals to the TV will push up his poll numbers and attract bigger crowds and bigger monthly meetups, gaining him more press coverage (equals more supporters), more money (equals more press coverage about the money, like this major national story). Each element fuels the other. He spent a bit of money on this barnstorming Sleepless Summer tour too, but look at the press bonanza it's getting him (not to mention stealing all John Kerry's fire in what was supposed to be his big week.)

And perhaps most importantly, the more Dean surges in polls, press, money and crowds, the more legitimate he looks, the more pundits write about him as the person likely to beat Bush, instead of the person most likely to lose. And the more voters who are not wowed by him but are OK with him coalesce around him as Our Best Shot.

He's actually taking a page from the Bush 2000 strategy there. That's how Bush smashed the far superior choice of McCain. He made himself so inevitable so early--in his case by raising so much money--that he was the presumptive nominee before any of the voting started. Dean will never go that far in a field of nine, and in the boisterous D party instead of the R party, but he can use the technique to build himself into The Most Formidable Fall Candidate, instead of The Risky Fall Candidate.

The main thing is momentum. Each of these forces: money-raising, crowds, polls, enthusiasm and press feeds off each other. Spending less than 10% of what he raises this quarter (possibly much less--you know he's lowballing the estimate) seems like a very prudent move to keep the cycle fueled. It will earn him more net cash by the end of the quarter, and growing standing in all the other areas.

And he will be better prepared in the important six Round 2 states to boot. Brilliant strategy.

And good as the Times piece otherwise is, it only captured the after-thought part of all this.

(The pic is from Seattle, and not part of the Times coverage.)

From Tuesday's Financial Times:

Clark backers raise close to $1m for White House bid

Activists trying to persuade Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general, to run for president said yesterday that by this weekend they would have $1m pledged to finance a bid for the White House.

The group behind draftwesleyclark.com told a Washington briefing they had helped mobilise 30,000 people to write letters to Mr Clark urging him to stand.

The polling data compiled by Zogby International also showed Mr Clark was just beginning to prick the US public consciousness, making it into the top five most popular contenders for the Democratic nomination.

The opinion polls and the draftwesleyclark.com news conference showed just as convincingly that Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont once dismissed as a long-shot for the nomination, is now in the lead.

A million dollars for somebody who may not even be running, that's damn impressive. Does seem to indicate there's a wealth of money on the table if he does announce. And that doesn't seem to include what the other draftclark group has raised.

He said in the past few days that he'll decide within two weeks.

Dean is drawing huge crowds and huge local press coverage from each city he's visiting on his 4-day Sleepless Summer tour. You can see the local coverage here. And Tuesday morning's AP account for national publication is glowing as well:

SPOKANE, Wash. — Presidential candidate Howard Dean drew an adoring overflow crowd at a town hall meeting Monday with his high-tech campaign to restore old-school Democratic values.

. . . “The reason this campaign can draw 900 people in Spokane at 9 in the morning is because we want our country back again,” Dean said. “Stand up and be proud to be a Democrat.” . . .

The unexpectedly large crowd overwhelmed Dean’s organizers, one day after a speech in Seattle drew the largest turnout of his campaign. [Which the piece estimated at 8,000.]

The tour culminates today in Chicago and New York, where where huge crowds are expected.  (Navy Pier in Chicago, Bryant Park on 42nd St. in NY. The NY rally tonight will be broadcast on CPAN2.) (The pic is from Seattle.)

USA Today just posted a very long, informative cover story about Dean, which illustrates several evolutions ocurring in his campaign.

It opens on money and tactics, but gets more interesting later. But let's start with the opening:

Now a player, Dean raises campaign goals

MILWAUKEE — Democrat Howard Dean is boosting his fundraising goals to new heights and is about to escalate his advertising on television in moves that underscore how his campaign is shaping the Democratic primary season: Dean has come from nowhere to lead his rivals on several fronts, and he has the money to maintain an intense pace.

The former governor of Vermont raised $7.6 million in the second quarter of the year, outdoing his eight rivals for the Democratic nomination for president. For the three months ending Sept. 30, Dean is setting his sights on $10.3 million — the amount Bill Clinton raised in the same period of 1995, when he was president. That was the best performance by any Democratic presidential candidate in a single quarter the year before an election.

That's interesting news, even for someone following the campaign closely. This was news to me too--big contrast to his early frugal approach to staff:

His campaign, meanwhile, has been on a hiring binge. He has paid staff in 13 states, more states than any other Democratic campaign. And Dean is expanding his TV campaign to more states that have early primaries or caucuses.

Smart, I think. With all the front-loaded primaries, he has to be ready to do something the week after NH, if he does win it.

I was also stunned to learn that Dean "confers regularly" with General Wesley Clark. That's certainly great news, for a couple reasons. For one, I've been saying for months how great each would be as the others' running mate. (Or more precisely that Dean might make a great running mate for Clark, but Clark is the absolute made-to-order running mate who could single-handedly solve Dean's biggest weaknesses.) The only rationale I could see for Dean not picking Clark (I know I'm way ahead of myself, but humor me) was the two men turning out to despise each other. That's apparently not an issue.

But the best of the piece is best at capturing the more subtle changes:

Dean's pitch is becoming less strident as his status changes. "If I am more dignified and presidential, it's because I have been doing this for a lot longer," he says. "I have more confidence."

It ends on an appearance in Falls Church, Va., where Dean is unveiling "the first full-blown tryout of his new approach to defense issues. A crowd of several thousand is on hand Saturday."

The writer quotes several of the key lines, then closes on this note:

Cheers interrupt Dean as he delivers one applause line after another. But some in the crowd sense he is at a turning point. "I like his abrasive quality, the way he started shaking things up from the beginning," says Hope Brown, 33, of Cheverly, Md., a desktop publisher. But "he's going to have to tone it down in order to win. I think he already has started to tone it down."