“The press used to say we’re too small, too narrow, that we weren’t very diverse. “Now we have two of the largest and most diverse unions on our side. Let them say that now.”

– Howard Dean

Friday in Rochester, N.H. 

Oh, Howard, don’t get all in a tizzy.

When you started your “grassroots” movement, it was whiter, richer and more Leftist than an afternoon of Shakespeare in the park in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. When I started writing about your infamous “meet-ups” in August, there were – at least in the test market city of Columbus – enough suburbanized relics from the Love generation to sink a battleship, though they never do so without proper U.N. approval.

In August, I feared you wouldn’t have enough time to change your movement into something viable. I didn’t expect anything overpowering, just something – oh, I don’t know – more diverse than a voting demographic defined by having regular Internet access and the ability to use it. Back then, it just didn’t seem in the cards.

But, doc, you surprised a lot of us again. You are getting pretty good at that. Who knows if you can keep it up for long, but you seem to be branching out in all the right directions; the energy from suburban coffeehouses and Internet cafes has reached a new audience. Finally.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for something new and fresh, but, I’ll admit: If nothing else, you’re an exciting player, a fighter, and I’m excited for anyone with more character in one rolled-up Oxford cloth shirtsleeve than Al Gore and Joe Lieberman had in their entire campaign.

Maybe more street smarts, too.

According to The Washington Post, your stop at a community college in New Hampshire Friday was “the campaign-trail kickoff of (your) efforts to position (yourself) as labor’s man.” The energy from August has began to trickle down, translating into a campaign that has started to winning over blue-collar strongholds across the country and into endorsements from different labor unions – including the AFL-CIO’s two largest unions.

Sure, The Post insists you are “still No.2 in the hearts of labor.” Others will note that Dick Gephardt, the No.1 labor man, has the endorsement of 21 unions, reportedly representing nearly 5 million voters – a significant stake in the claim that he is the right choice for the people.

True, he started stealing early endorsements from labor unions across the country. He took the Teamsters. He smoked you early in all the places that should have been yours if you were then the populist that you claimed to be.

Gephardt’s strategy seems to be wearing thin anyway; going from the blue-collar masses and trying to make a run from there on up may not have been the right way to go.

Maybe you knew that all along, since you went exactly the opposite direction – trying to get funding from middle-class voters and exposure from their media outlets and then championing your way down the socio-economic spectrum.

Which may have always been the best move, since no one needs every union on their side. Most are as captive to the Democratic party as the religious right is to the Republican camp. So good for him with his dozens of labor unions on his side.

What Gephardt doesn’t have that you do is the funding and the persona and the exposure that can take a few million middle-class whites made sour over the war and the poor economy into a nomination where all the other peripheral parties will fall in line.

John Ross is a senior in English. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].