Hey, Joe Klein, this is just silly:

I suspect that Obama's aim is to rebuild the bonfire of Howard Dean's grass-roots campaign, minus the scream. But raging infernos don't just happen. First comes courage.

I give Klein credit for saying that Dean had courage ("Dean never would have had his bonfire if he hadn't opposed the invasion of Iraq in clear, plain, inspiring English") -- but Obama isn't running a Dean-like campaign. He's running a very mainstream campaign as a young man in a hurry, a la JFK or Bill Clinton -- which is a smart move considering what usually happens to Democratic insurgents (Dean, Ned Lamont, Jesse Jackson). So Klein is declaring Obama a likely failure at something he's not even trying to accomplish.

Also, who says insurgent "bonfires" happen only when the candidate has "courage"? Is that what George Wallace had in 1968 -- courage? How about Ross Perot in '92 and '96, or, hell, Jesse Ventura in 1998?

Joe, stop measuring every Democrat against your misty watercolor '60s memories. Bobby Kennedy died a long time ago, and Eugene McCarthy's been gone for a while, too.