Dean's support is a completely different phenomenon than "same old, same old" campaign politics. The support is vastly drawn from people who have never been involved in a campaign before, they are from Republicans to Greens and all in between, and are organizing on their own, bottom up, not top down. The way these people have connected through meetup.com and then spread support to their friends and relatives is COMPLETELY different than the typical staged rally. The other candidates don't get this support because, unlike the other Dem candidates, 1) Dean has a message people are excited to hear 2) Dean has a way of delivering the message that is honest and sincere and that resonates with people 3) Dean has an executive record in Vermont that shows result. Time and again on the Dean blog, I have read people say they had given up hope on the democratic process until they learned more about Dean, and that they are participating for the first time in a campaign. The media is finally waking up to the fact that this is a phenomenon that really is action from the people creating these huge crowds from word of mouth, not from being invited by the campaign.

Read Joe Trippi's interview (Dean's campaign manager) regarding how the people led the campaign, instead of the campaign leading the people.

http://blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/001096.html

quote from AUGUST 19 interview...
We had, for example, an email list of 481 people in Austin and we emailed them and said "We're coming." We get to the event, and there are 3200 people there. The reason there are 3200 people there is that those 481 people went out, downloaded flyers, leafleted the Latino community, leafleted polling places for a city election that was occurring, made phone calls, and did all those kind of things on their own.