More cause for concern...

...comes from the folks at The Moderate Independent, who seem to have a generally pro-Clark slant. They offer this assessment of the Dean campaign.

...Dean’s biggest asset and the thing that earned Gore’s endorsement, the awesome, ground-breaking campaign he is running, is become less and less important. The reason, in fact, Dean’s tightly-run, highly-run campaign was so appealing to people was that it represented the opposite of Gore’s campaign. Fervent activists finally had a man who not only would speak boldly, but knew how to make a campaign that would have the ground troops and counterattacking swiftness to be able to stand up to the Bush/Limbaugh machine."

I give them big points for noticing that behind the 'People Powered Howard' rhetoric of grassroots empowerment, the Dean Machine is a ruthlessly disciplined, top down operation in many ways. The problem is, that discipline is being exercised in the service of a man who can't discipline himself.

The piece goes on to show why that last point is such a problem. The campaign is about to shift to a new audience, and "the people who are just beginning to tune in now are not the activist types who pay attention to such things. Now, Democrats and Independents are tuning in simply to see the people who are running, how they present themselves, and what they have to say. And Dean’s uncharismatic nature, tendency to boldly contradict himself, and his, for many Americans just tuning in, incomprehensible stance with regard to Iraq, makes him simply seem unelectable to the late tuners."

The question is whether those "late tuners" are arriving just in time, or just a bit too late. I suspect that depends in part on whether they find someone they can find someone with enough appeal to consolidate them. I think it's John Kerry. The Moderate Independent folks seem to favor Wes Clark, but concede that my guy's got a shot, too.

"John Kerry," they write, "had gotten the early bounce and frontrunner status when people looked and saw the Democrats had a veteran in their midst who was strong on defense but also had a solid history of supporting Democratic issues domestically. Now, John is getting that bounce once again from people tuning in for the first time."

And that's the basis of the 'Comeback Kid' scenario.