Dean is no longer actively campaigning, but he has left a lot behind him.
Most obviously, all the primary candidates adopted his more strident, less compromising tone. As a volunteer in the Clark campaign, I also know that we aped quite shamelessly many of the techniques that the Dean people pioneered: the blog, the handwritten letters, the calls from volunteers' cel phones, the meet-ups. I hope the Kerry people were taking notes too, but from news accounts and what I can pick up online, I'm not sure how hip they are to a new way of going about politics. (Maybe someone out there can educate me on this.)
You might question how effective these Dean techniques really are politically, and you might be right. What I don't think you can question is the importance of the new class of small donors Dean brought into politics. Mark Shields was on the tube the other day, and he said this development has saved the soul of the Democratic Party because now it might no longer be dependent on corporate and special interest contributions. I agree. But I have to add that there is a connection between the more horizontal, empowering structure of the Dean campaign and those contributions... that people gave because they felt they were part of a community, that they had an ownership stake in the campaign. If the Democratic Party reverts to the top-down habits of yesteryear, that class of small donors and their liberating potential may well disappear.
Here's hoping that the Dean way lives on.