Reclaim the Scream

Was it planned this way?

Pre-Iowa, Dean was already in serious trouble.  Worst 2 weeks of the campaign.  A forced photo-op with Carter.  Negative attacks on Clark.  Caught in a mud-war with Gephardt.  Volunteers who cross the line in Iowa.  Cringe-worthy remarks on religion.  The "Dean Tapes".  Caught going off on a retired Republican.  In general, way off message.

One scream later, all of that is gone.  It's all the scream, all the time.  Three days of it.  Drowns out the SOTU.  Gives Kerry far less press than he would have otherwise.  Sure he's lost soft support in the polls, but most of us hardcore Dean folks here on dKos were having a conniption too, and we have more or less recovered.  I'm confident we've got a good chance at getting many of those folks back.

And for what have we suffered.  A pretty innocuous campaign rally, caught on national TV.  The media has overhyped it and tried to sell it, successfully so far, as evidence of Dean's instability.  Dean can reclaim the scream, turn it into a plus for him.  Letterman was the start of it.  The scream (in transcript form) is now on the Dean Blog.  How soon before we have the "Scream like Howard Dean" fundraiser?  Will we see it in an ad?

Dean was in disarray heading in to Iowa.  What the scream does is essentially drown out all that unpleasant stuff he was involved in pre-Iowa.  All he has to do is explain the scream, turn it into a plus, and he's in a better position than if he had kept his big mouth shut.

Dean supporters: do your part to reclaim the scream.  I'm using it as my signature now, and linking it to DFA contribution page.  What else can we do?