When I was at the Irish Festival in Butte yesterday, one of the other performers came up to me and said, "I like your Dean button." I had a Howard Dean button pinned to my cap visor. The performer was from Portland, OR. In our discussion, he said he had donated to a campaign for the first time because of Dean. The last meeting we had here in town brought home to me again how private citizens in large numbers are being inspired by Dean to get involved in the presidential campaign.
Here is a news article from today on the same subject:

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                        Dan Gillmor at the San Jose Mercury News posts his column today on his visit to Dean
                        HQ, and examines how the net is helping to restore the American community:

                                 The profound insight in the campaign's Net-working -- which raises
                                 huge risks along with opportunities -- is in trusting people out at the
                                 edge to become the campaign, too. The campaign tries to give them
                                 some additional online tools, but the people out at the edges are not
                                 under anyone's orders but their own.

                                 "What's going on in Austin?'' Trippi asks rhetorically. ``We don't have
                                 a clue. We're just assisting....'

                                 "To enable and promote commitment, you have to start with trust,''
                                 [volunteer Ka-Ping Yee] says. "And trust is tremendously enhanced
                                 by the power of human contact.''

                                 In the end, that notion is at the core of Dean's rise to prominence. His
                                 campaign has used the tools of communications and collaboration to
                                 assist more human contact, bringing together people who have a
                                 cause and want to take it to others.

                                 Will Dean take this all the way to the White House? Who knows, but
                                 maybe this kind of conversation can spread into the governing part
                                 of the process, not just the electioneering. At the very least, the Dean
                                 effort has brought back into the process some people who'd given up,
                                 and these tools will inevitably find their way into other campaigns
                                 and causes.

                                 "If we win,'' says Trippi, "we'll have done something for democracy.''

                                 Win or lose, they've done a lot already.