Then, as now, a party establishment—based in Congress, governors' mansions and Georgetown salons—viewed him as a loudmouthed lefty whose visibility would ruin the Democratic brand in Red States.
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n the meantime, with the DNC meeting approaching on Feb. 12, party insiders have been conducting an urgent, so far fruitless, search for a consensus Dean-stopper. The Clintons don't like Dean on substance or style, seeing him as too left and too loose-lipped. But they're being careful. Hillary, already eying a presidential run in 2008, doesn't want to alienate the possible winner; she's leaving DNC maneuvers to Bill, whose answer last month was to sound out current chairman Terry McAuliffe about remaining in the job. (He declined.)
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Last week the search for a surefire Dean-stopper (if there is one) reached new levels, NEWSWEEK has learned, with several governors—among them Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Bill Richardson of New Mexico—trying to gin up a last-ditch plan: let Dean be chairman, but confine his role to pure nuts-and-bolts duties by layering him with a new "general chairman" spokesman for the party.
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The incendiary quotes are old news, his advisers insist; besides, Dean will concentrate on organization, not provocation. He and Bill Clinton have talked—at length, sources say—and Dean has hired shrewd Washington hands to help him, including Jim Jordan, Kerry's first presidential handler.