OK, I've been pretty lax about keeping this blog up, mainly because of a killer workload the last month, but this is pretty hard to ignore: Gore Will Endorse Dean (washingtonpost.com)

I actually haven't put much up here about my support for Gov. Dean, but I actually think that (a) he IS electable and (b) his organizational strategies are the kinds of new thinking that are needed to beat Bush and his money-heavy approach.

Not that it's going to be easy, and not that Dean doesn't have his flaws. I'm hoping that he learns from his recent stubborn reaction on the "Southern white guys w/Confederate flags on their pickups" debate incident -- not that his point was off, but would it have been any less meaningful to have made a graceful retraction and deny John Edwards the meaningless 15-seconds to posture in the spotlight?

But I digress. Having Al's support is obviously big news, but let's face up to the fact that Al got soundly out-strategized by Karl Rove in 2000. I guess I'm too much the pessimist to see this as entirely good news. Putting Dean that much farther into the perceived front-runner's position potentially sets him up for bigger stumbles -- he's going to have to be more guarded about his actions, which could make him sound and think more like a mainstream politician.

The more unequivocal good news, I think, is that the sooner the Democratic Party can consolidate and build the support structure behind a couple of strong candidates, the better off we'll be for the general election. And this is a major step in that direction, before a single primary vote has been cast. I hope this gives the race the shakeup it needs to get Sharpton, Mosley-Braun, Edwards and even Lieberman to hang it up. We just don't need the distraction, guys. (Yes, Kucinich too, but has anyone taken him seriously at any point along the way?)

Coming soon: I promise to write about why I think, from an ad guy's perspective, the Dean campaign is the antidote to celebrity / brand name politics.