Dean critics say the tack to the center has already begun--the candidate recently told a Florida reporter he was not for easing sanctions on Cuba. But even as he has achieved the front-runner status that was supposed to temper his candidacy, Dean has retained his rhetorical populism. In fact, he is grafting on new messages to attract African-American and Latino voters to his disproportionately white campaign. A onetime free trader, he is reaching out to union members with a message designed to undercut Gephardt and Kucinich, drawing cheers from Midwestern crowds with pledges to stop "shipping our jobs to China."

That's not a new line on the campaign trail. Gephardt's been working this turf since 1988. And Kucinich's denunciations of NAFTA, the WTO and permanent most-favored-nation trading status for China are more passionate and precise than anything heard from Dean. Yet Dean is getting cheers at union gatherings, just as he continues to draw the Democratic activists, the poll numbers and the campaign contributions--he is on track to raise more than $10 million this quarter, a fundraising record, and the money is flowing so fast that Dean aides talk about rejecting federal matching funds so they can overshoot fundraising limits that go with the grants. Pols who once dismissed Dean's rise as a temporary venting of Democratic frustrations have pretty much given up on suggesting that his campaign has peaked.

For all the grumbling from the DLC about his being "unelectable," Dean has pulled himself up from the asterisk level to the front covers of Time and Newsweek. And, Loebsack notes, when he went to a Dean "meet-up" in August, he found that many in the room were Independents and some were Republicans. In Minnesota, State Senator Scott Dibble, a progressive Democrat who was close to the late Senator Paul Wellstone and who now co-chairs Dean's campaign in that state, credits Dean's web-savvy campaign for bringing thousands of new people--especially young voters--into the process. "I just think that what Dean has done so far suggests that he knows how to put together a campaign that will build the Democratic base, and that's what we need to do if we're going to beat Bush," says Dibble. "Dean's gotten this far by running a campaign that's smarter, better at organizing and better at going after Bush. That's a big part of why I'm with him."

Dean's success has made him the prime target of his competitors, even as they attempt to match his Bush-bashing--as several did during the September 4 debate. After trying to graft some of Dean's anti-Bush anger onto their tepid stump speeches--as if reading a script, Gephardt declared, "To beat this President, we have to be bold"--the other Democratic contenders started to recognize that rhetorical flourishes would not be enough to slow the bandwagon of an emerging front-runner. Kerry, who now trails Dean by twenty-one poll points in New Hampshire and who has fallen to third place in Iowa surveys, "re-launched" his campaign in early September--positioning himself as a fighter unafraid of throwing jabs in Dean's direction. Gephardt, who had hoped labor support would carry him into contention, has been stung by suggestions from union leaders that he needs to stir a little Dean-style excitement at the grassroots; this in turn has led Gephardt's camp to take some of the sharpest shots at Dean's less-than-stellar record on issues such as free trade. "Howard Dean was one of the leading governors to support NAFTA and even attended the initial White House ceremony with Canadian and Mexican leaders in 1993," read a Gephardt campaign statement issued after more than 100 Iowa union activists signed a Labor Day newspaper advertisement backing Dean. Following his delivery of an early August speech that portrayed Dean as too liberal, nowhere-man Joe Lieberman ended the month by attacking Dean from the left on issues such as protecting Social Security.

As the Democratic competitors geared up for fall television campaigns in early primary and caucus states, several recorded ads attacking Dean--though they kept the ads on hold, fearing that, like Lieberman's criticisms of Dean's antiwar stance, these hits would only enhance the Vermonter's standing. Aides to Kerry and Gephardt quietly acknowledge that their candidates continue to suffer slippage at the grassroots because of their votes last fall to authorize Bush's use of force against Iraq. "If Kerry had voted against the resolution, the race would be over," said a Kerry staffer. "Without the war, Dean's got nothing. But, because he opposed the use-of-force resolution, he says he's the only Democrat with the guts to oppose Bush. Of course, he has to ignore Kucinich."

Dennis Kucinich did not merely vote against the use-of-force resolution; the Ohio Congressman played a central role in organizing Congressional opposition to the war. He has been a far more steadfast foe of Bush's policies at home and abroad than Dean. Yet, while Dean has ridden an antiwar stance from obscurity to front-runner status, Kucinich remains in the doldrums, polling near the bottom of the field in Iowa and New Hampshire, virtually unnoted by the national media and struggling to raise the money he will need to match the first-tier contenders in the fall's TV ad wars. While Moseley Braun and Sharpton, both consistent progressives, have been slow to mount serious efforts nationwide, Kucinich really has tried--visiting Iowa repeatedly; winning endorsements from Barbara Ehrenreich, Ed Asner and Ani DiFranco, and a kind word from Ralph Nader; running second to Dean in the MoveOn.org "virtual primary"; and raising enough money to build basic campaign infrastructure from Maine to California. "It's bizarre. Dennis is out there mounting a genuinely progressive campaign," says Steve Cobble, a veteran aide to the Rev. Jesse Jackson who now advises Kucinich. "Yet the media keep calling Dean the progressive, the liberal, even though Dennis is the one taking the progressive positions--just as he is the one who has taken political risks to advance them."

Cobble has a point. It is Kucinich who has fought the hard fights against the Bush Administration in Congress--frequently going against the party leadership in exactly the manner Dean backers say Democrats should. As co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, Kucinich has led challenges to the Bush Administration not just on the war but on nuclear disarmament, military spending and the Patriot Act. Even now, while Dean supports keeping US troops in Iraq, Kucinich calls for bringing them home. While Dean says he represents Paul Wellstone's "democratic wing of the Democratic Party," there are few issues on which Kucinich cannot claim to be a truer heir to Wellstone's progressive populist mantle.

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