Howard Dean gave a speech/rally on the Univ. of Colorado campus in Boulder this morning. Colorado has no presidential primary this cycle, and caucuses aren't held until April, so realistically the state will not influence the nomination. So, this rally was presumably tacked onto a fundraising trip and isn't part of a real campaign in the state.
Disclosure here: I'm undecided on the primary race. I lean slightly toward Clark but am keeping an open mind on Dean.
I had a pretty good spot about 100 feet from the dais, and was pleasantly surprised that Dean showed up only 30 minutes after the advertised time (most politicians are 1-2 hours late to their rallies). I would guess there were 1000-2000 people there, including a dozen or so GOP hecklers who were surprisingly quiet and civilized.
My review of the speech? A little disappointing. He spoke at a shouting level and got the requisite applause, but didn't electrify the crowd the way I've seen Clinton do. He stumbled over a lot of words.
Probably the best parts were on foreign policy, where he used the phrase "honor and dignity" well in a vicious dig at Bush. On domestic policy, good marks for saying he has a health care plan which costs $87B/year (another clever barb). He closed with his trademark "I'm tired of being divided by...." lines, which were a crowd-pleaser but seemed to be delivered hurriedly. And he's dropped the "fundamentalist preachers" line. Great patriotic points for reclaiming the flag from "Ashcroft, Limbaugh, and the rest." And I guess he's getting into the front-runner vibe, because he minimized the swipes at the Democratic party and the other candidates. Then again, this may have had more to do with the fact that we're not a primary state.
Weak points: he repeated the phrase "Ken Lay and the boys" about 87 billion times and it got old. His environment/energy section (a big issue in Boulder) was not very coherent -- he said everyone loves SUVs, and he has two of them, then went on to talk about fuel efficiency standards (good) and then wind (ok) and ethanol (please....). He said something bizarre about being a "second class citizen" (huh?) because most of the world's wind turbines are in Europe. After the speech was over, he started repeating "You have the power!" over and over, which seemed weird and out of place at the end of a talk which was not particularly populist in tone.
Overall, I give the speech a B. A good speech by a man who would make a fine president, but it didn't mesmerize the crowd (or me), and I came away from it wondering why some of his support is so fervent.