http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2004/02/kuttner-r-02-20.htmlsnip:
Dean also invented a new way of doing politics and raising money, via the Internet. Despite the faltering of Dean's candidacy, every other candidate is now imitating the e-fundraising that Dean pioneered, which still has the potential of allowing small money to level the playing field against big money.
And Dean demonstrated anew the small-d democratic potential of electoral politics. He was fond of saying that his campaign "is about you" - the legions of eager volunteers, who were less attracted by Dean personally than by his promise of democratic engagement and political change.
Dean gave a new generation of young people hope in their country's institutions. (Young people keep looking for leaders who reflect their own idealism; and their hopes keep getting dashed -- from Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 to the pre-Monica, pre-triangulation Bill Clinton in 1992, to Howard Dean. But new generations, of the naturally idealistic young, keep being born. Dean was the hero of this one.)