I just had a thought. Like Dean or not, he has an advantage the others don't - a very activist supporter network that is already used to taking action on behalf of Dean.
One of the problems with 2004 is that Bush is going to manipulate a way to bring the soldiers home in droves and somehow make it look triumphant.
Dean's extremely good at outthinking politically so they might already have something planned to counteract this, but I was thinking that maybe he should start planning now to organize his supporters to do some serious veteran outreach.
As soldiers come home, the Dean supporters could contact the soldiers, give them support, and perhaps get their views about what it actually was like and what their opinions are of the media treatment. If it was coordinated in such a way so that there wasn't a quid pro quo and it was actually a Dean-sponsored effort to support the troops on the ground in the way that the Bush administration won't, it would not only increase democratic understanding and empathy for our soldiers, but strike a political contrast.