I've been saying for quite sometime now, to my friends and others I talk to about politics that Dean is the Democratic Reagan. Just think about it. The Conservative movement and the movement that is driving Dean's campaign (I believe that Dean's campaign has tapped into elements much deeper than a normal campaign, thus "movement" seems to be the only applicable term)are quite similar to each other. I'm not going to say that Dean will be the nominee and the next president, I'm simply saying that what Dean is doing for the party is much deeper than what these people who say he'll lose all 50 states see.
Now you might think that Dean maybe a Liberal Goldwater by this reasoning, but hold on. I think the movement that Dean is creating is not something he is creating at all. Dean is simply tapping into a more liberal version of the New Democrat movement that began with Gary Hart and the Mondale campaign. After Mondale lost big time, the DLC started and people began to re-evaluate the beliefs of the party. Well, we did this and we got Clinton. Clinton, much like Nixon (it's not a fair comparison I know), was an embattled moderate president tied to scandal.
To many Republicans Reagan was way too conservative to run for the party's nomination and was considered weak because of limited intellect. Yet Reagan won and was the culmination of the conservative movement. I beleieve that history in many ways does repeat itself. Just in different ways each time and I think that the pendulum has swung the other direction towards us and Dean represents this. Dean is considered too liberal and weak on defense. Dean and Reagan were also considered outsiders. We'll see how it all plays out, but I think Dean or any of the other campaigns to ride the tide to victory.