There's been a disconcerting shift in the way some pundits have been considering Dr. Dean. Before the Iowa primaries, the storyline was that he was too mean, too angry, too willing to attack the party. He's toned it down since then. Some pundits, notably Tim Noah and Josh Micah Marshall, have implied that he's toned it down
too much. Without his passion, they say, Dean can't really set himself apart from the rest of the field.
I think these pundits are missing an important fact: Dean is still criticizing the Democratic party. Occasionally he'll still criticize other candidates by name, as with the Iraq question in the debate last night. But he's gone a little more subtle than that in general.
In reality, Howard Dean has a new theme... that's essentially a tweak of his old one. Instead of saying "John Kerry voted for war, the bastard", he says "When the other Democrats chose not to stand up, I DID. You can trust me to actually fight for your beliefs". You can see this framed perfectly in the "Leader" ad. The money quote there was, I think, "When George Bush was riding high in the polls and other Democrats were silent, Howard Dean spoke up".
This is as much an attack on Kerry and Edwards as anything else, but it doesn't COME OFF as one. It comes off as Dean talking about his record. Far from being jettisoned, Dean's anti-Washington Dems message has only been refined. I wonder when the pundits will realize this.