A Bold, New Messenger -Globe

[Rose Siding]

By Eileen McNamara, 1/11/2004
snip>
A stop at a Dean rally at the 125-year-old Music Hall in this coastal community provides some sense of what Kerry and the rest of the doctor's rivals are up against. Members of the press corps, playing Solitaire or answering e-mails on their laptops, may have grown weary of a stump speech that has not varied much in months, but the 900-plus voters who turned out for the candidate's midday appearance on Friday were electrified.

It was hardly Dean's first well-received visit to this city of 26,000, but many in the audience were hearing the jabs at President Bush and the calls for environmental protection and educational investment for the first time. They stamped their feet at key points and stood to applaud eight times in 45 minutes.

Wesley Clark is drawing large crowds as the Jan. 27 primary approaches -- he packed the aisles as well as the pews of a Portsmouth church the other day -- but it will be difficult for the retired general or anyone else to trump Dean's organizational superiority in New Hampshire.
snip>

Where his rivals hear anger, Dean's audiences hear hope for real change. What his rivals perceive as rashness, Dean's supporters see as boldness. When he tells them that he does not have the power to change the country, that they do, these voters believe him and, maybe for the first time, think the political process belongs to them, not the candidates hungry for their votes.


http://www.boston.com/news/politics/primaries/new_hampshire/articles/2004/01/11/a_bold_new_messenger//