Okay, I'll make a promise to you. This will be the last time I mention Howard Dean until he drops out.

Presenting Exiting Deanspace:

Dean?s campaign was never actually successful. It did many of the things successful campaigns do, of course ? got press and raised money and excited people and even got potential voters to aver to campaign workers and pollsters that they would vote for him when the time came. When the time came, however, they didn?t. The campaign never succeeded at making Howard Dean the first choice of any group of voters he faced, and it seems unlikely to do so today.

A fascinating article, if only a bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking. However, it is from the perspective of a former Deaniac, which makes it ring so true.

Presidential campaigns will always be different from now on. The Democratic party has a new and better voice, a clearer message. More people paid attention to what's wrong with our current administration. With our increasingly conservative media, would WMDs and Halliburton contracts and No Child Left Behind ever have been considered a big deal to a larger populace? I can't say for sure, but I truly believe that we owe a great deal of this cultural and political shift to the campaign of Howard Dean. He may have screamed a lot and looked so angry, but in that anger, there was a message. I think it got through. And in that respect, all of the blog entries, all of the conversations I had with friend and strangers, all of the letters I wrote to citizens of New Hampshire and Iowa, and even the $100 I gave his campaign -- none of it was in vain.

I don't feel like my hope is shattered. The numbers are looking good for Kerry, and even though I'm not a big fan of the guy, it goes without saying how much I like him compared to the other option. And who knows -- maybe Edwards can pull ahead. I like him more than Kerry. I can't help but feel like I'm settling, but I'm not. Settling would be facing another four years of Dubya.

It's time to face the truth. The button comes off my bag.

Here's something to cheer you up: Right now, the main headline at CNN reads, "Bush sets up intelligence inquiry." See, it's funny.