Crammed into a basement bar in Manhattan's fashionable Upper East Side, 200 people last week watched TV screens hanging from the ceiling. They clapped, whooped, yelled and screamed, with the fervor of evangelicals.
It takes a lot to get vast numbers of Americans interested in politics, but Howard Dean, the presidential hopeful whose speech was being broadcast, has done it. Stephanie Low, who manages classical musicians, stood on a chair and told the throng: "I've met him. This is the man we've been waiting for."
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
Similar scenes were being played out across the country. It began as a surge of grassroots activism, tens of thousands of people signing up to Dean's campaign. He was the man who stood against the war in Iraq, an unashamed radical whom fellow Democrats fear will doom them to crushing defeat.
But this ex-governor of Vermont has now moved up to the front of the messy race to be next year's Democratic challenger for the presidency.
Key to the success has been these "meet-ups." As Low spoke last Wednesday night, more than 500 other cities were hosting simultaneous events. The tactics are ingenious. At the end of the meetings names and addresses of undecided voters in battleground states are handed out. Dean supporters then write to them. More than 30,000 have been sent to Iowa alone.
The money is pouring in. Dean raised more than any of his Democratic rivals during the second three months of the year, taking in US$7.6 million. More important, he can begin to challenge President George W. Bush. In an incident gleefully reported by Dean supporters, his activists decided to match the efforts of Vice President Dick Cheney. When Cheney raised US$300,000 last month from a South Carolina luncheon with 150 private donors, the Dean campaign launched a blitz to beat it.
Within a few days -- using only the internet network of Dean activists -- they had raised more than US$500,000.
Last week Dean's triumphant face gazed from the covers of Newsweek, Time and US News and World Report. He has tapped into a rich vein of support based on his long-standing opposition to invading Iraq.
Success has put a spotlight on his personal style and political record. He is a natural orator, becoming red-faced and emotional during speeches, which he gives without notes. He has a reputation for being gruff with journalists, but, privately he has perfected a "bedside manner" with ordinary people.
He also has courage. During a governorship election in 2000, when an ugly row over gay rights raged, he had to wear a bullet-proof vest, but did not back down from making Vermont the only state to give gay couples the same legal status as married people.
His past as a doctor is not being left out. While speaking in South Carolina, he revived a woman who fainted outside an ice cream parlor. In New Hampshire he treated a volunteer bitten by a dog.
Later the same day he administered first aid to two supporters in a car crash. His wife, Judith Steinberg, is also a doctor. She rarely attends political meetings and does not campaign. His two children have also stayed out of the limelight. One of them, Paul, aged 17, is doing community service for stealing.
But it is Dean's record as Governor that is the hot debate in Democrat circles. Though fiscally conservative, he has liberal policies on healthcare and the environment. With his anti-war rhetoric, he is also committed to revoking Bush's massive tax cuts program. For many centrist Democrats, Dean invokes memories of George McGovern and Mike Dukakis and is seen as certain to lose if he ends up facing Bush.
Last week, Democrat rival Joe Lieberman said Dean was a "ticket to nowhere."
The Democrat Leadership Council, which masterminded former president Bill Clinton's rise to power, has also attacked him.
"For him to win against Bush, he would have to substantially change his message," said Ed Kilgore, the council's policy director.
Republicans are said to be delighted at the idea of fighting Dean. At a Fourth of July parade, Karl Rove, Bush's top strategist, saw a group of Dean supporters march by and was reported to have told an aide: "That's the one we want. Go, Howard Dean!"
Certainly Bush is gathering the biggest "war chest" ever seen in a US election, one that dwarfs Dean's. By June he had raised more than US$32 million and aides say he is on target for US$200 million by next month.
Bush's main backers come from groups of businessmen and bankers, who organize friends and colleagues in management to donate.
However, some analysts say Dean is attracting new voters, so may be able to afford not to compete for the middle ground where conventional wisdom says elections are won.
"His support base has already translated into money, now we need to see if it will translate into votes," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the University of Pennsylvania.
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