DIGGING THE SCENE WITH THE DEAN MACHINE: James Taranto looks at Howard Dean, his temper, and his equivocations, and decides:

It is precisely because of his "faults" that Dean has a shot at the nomination. David Brooks has the best explanation of the Dean phenomenon, albeit in an article that mentions Dean only in passing. In brief, the Democrats who make up the party's base are mad--in both senses of the word. So blinded are they by their frustration at being out of power, and by their inexplicable hatred of President Bush, that they are astonishingly detached from reality. That Dean is determinedly wrong about Iraq is, for this constituency, a selling point. They are too. As an executive of Meetup.com, which has become an online center for grassroots Dean organizing, tells Fox News: "Howard Dean has a rabid following." (Good thing he's a physician.)

In other words, read--as the "It" phrase of 2003 goes--the whole thing (and Brooks' article as well.)