Where the 'Deaniacs' go now

But as is often the case with ground-breaking campaigns, some of the same features that propelled Dean also may have hurt him. While his attacks on Bush helped shift the national debate for the benefit of Democrats, they left him tagged as an "angry" candidate - a label he was never able to overcome.

While Dean's decentralized Internet-based campaign may have energized supporters, it also made for a disorganized and in some ways amateurish operation that was never able to handle the pressure and scrutiny of a front-running campaign.

"Campaigns that win are not necessarily the ones that do the most innovative or imaginative things," says Steve Grossman, Dean's former campaign chair. "They're the ones that make the fewest mistakes."

In the wake of Dean's collapse, his campaign has been criticized for mismanaging its war chest, pouring money into advertising months before key votes. His last-minute Iowa ads, hitting his rivals on the Iraq war, may have backfired, reinforcing an impression of Dean as negative.

His field organization, the largest of any campaign, was by many accounts not well run, with managers in Burlington having little control - or knowledge - of what was happening on the ground in key states.

The campaign also failed to do enough research on their own candidate, and was unprepared for some of the attacks that came their way. The most damaging may have been Dean's statement, made years earlier on a Canadian TV show, that caucuses catered to extremists and special interests. The tape surfaced days before the Iowa caucuses. Internal polls showed Dean's approval ratings dropped by double digits overnight.

Most important, perhaps, Dean himself proved to be an undisciplined campaigner. In the weeks before the Iowa caucuses, he made a series of gaffes. The comments - from suggesting Osama bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty, to his remark that the US was no safer after the capture of Saddam Hussein - created the impression of a candidate out of the mainstream.

He also displayed rigidity, resisting changes to his campaign and style that ultimately kept him from looking convincingly presidential. The former Vermont governor steered away from biography to an almost unprecedented extent, bringing out his wife, for example, only in the final days. While this furthered the impression that the campaign was about his supporters more than about him, it also made Dean an unusually enigmatic front-runner - a candidate who, for all the coverage, may still have seemed too unknown.

Even the major endorsements Dean drew, from Al Gore or Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, seemed inspired more by his successthan by any kind of personal approval or loyalty. By contrast, Kerry spent his final days in Iowa campaigning with Sen. Ted Kennedy and with a man whose life he'd saved in Vietnam, both of whom testified to Kerry's character.

Indeed, some observers say the Dean movement always seemed about much more than the candidate himself. Dean for America represented a network - a way to feel connected and empowered - in which the campaign for the presidency became an almost secondary goal.

The community's future political usefulness may hinge on Dean's ability to focus it around a new goal, as Sen. John McCain did by steering his insurgent movement toward the issue of campaign finance reform.

"His capacity to take them along with him depends a lot on his coming up with a fresh message," says Michael Cornfield, an expert on politics and the Internet.

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