Well, a scream waiting to happen again at least. In the latest of his controversial (to say the least) utterings, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said in San Francisco this week:

Republicans are "a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party."

Four months of Dean have made it abundantly clear that DFA's initial success organizationally was due to the brilliance and tech-savvy of Joe Trippi, Mathew Gross, Zephyr Teachout, et al. They are the ones who constructed this narrative of a grassroots movement, of a community more important than the candidate, and in the process-driven, fundraising-mad pre-primary period, it was enough to deflect attention away from Dr. Dean's fatal personality flaws. Simply by running the first four miles of the campaign marathon as a sprint, they appeared to be far ahead of everyone else; what they actually did – and this was brilliant while it lasted – is simply fast-forward the process, while the other candidates were playing the inside game of fundraising and endorsements, Dean was playing the crowds as you would in late October, and this made it seem like he was playing on a bigger stage.

Dean at the DNC is Dean without Trippi, Dean without the 15,000 person crowds (who can normally be counted upon to drown out the errant shriek), Dean minus the Movement. As it turned out, Dean was perfectly programmed to succeed in that in-between period (2003) where the activists are paying attention, but when the general public has yet to tune in. Once they did tune in, and the focus turned to personality over process, Dean flopped. The Dean chairmanship now is effectively the bookend to the Dean Scream. Now, virtually no one is tuned in – a development aided by keeping Dean in hiding for most of his chairmanship – which means that not even the activists feel vested in his leadership or committed to supporting him when he screws up.

Dean is also a victim of his own success. When he first arrived on the scene, leading Democrats were falling over each other to support the Iraq war, which made Dean's appeal unique. (His "What I want to know" DNC remarks in February '03 left me swearing he'd be the frontrunner before this was all over.) Today, every Democrat is anti-Iraq, and even Joe Biden is sounding like Dean. And when everyone is Howard Dean, the original doesn't seem all that necessary or appealing anymore.

Update: No screaming, but here's a screed from James Lileks on his new "ScreedBlog" (hopefully permalinks are coming soon):

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, unapologetic in the face of recent criticism that he has been too tough on his political opposition, said in San Francisco this week that Republicans are "a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party."

This will be met with two reactions: dismay from those who do not believe he speaks for Democrats – which is why he’s the head of the party, I guess – and elation from those who say Hell Yeah! Nail those pale christers, already! The former group has my sympathy, because it surely hurts to see the head of the party jam his foot so far in his mouth that the tassels of his loafers dangle from this buttocks. It must rankle the moderates to hear him fling this nonsense on a daily basis, after all; it's like having Pat Buchnan run the GOP and make constant fulminating speeches against Commie-Lezbo Vegans. The latter group might consider that Dr. Dean's reliable skill for vomiting undigested red meat on cue doesn’t endear them to moderates, but moderation isn’t what they want anyway. Unless you count “crucifying Bush but letting him climb down after half a day” as moderation.

“White Christian Party” has the advantage of Kluxer overtones, which plays into another hard-left paranoia: all them Jaysus people are a step away from whipping up a batch o' pointy hats with pillow cases and a can of spray starch, and marching into a field to hold hands around a cross and listen to someone demand that the entire book of Leviticus be made an amendment to the Constitution. The only one, for that matter. The ongoing freak-out of Deaniacs over religion is becoming a source of great amusement, really; it’s as if they just discovered that those big old buildings with purty glasss windows and pointy spires on top are actually used by people for something other than voting and annual pancake breakfasts. They can’t distance themselves from the groups that spend all their time using electronic microscopes to find crosses embedded in the currency or trying to keep the Boy Scouts from holding knot-tying classes in schools after class; they can’t reach out to the devout without having to explain why “white Christian” sounds like it’s meant as a criticism. Not an enviable position.

“They all behave the same.”

Oh, Howard. If you only knew.