Andrew Sullivan:

If I were Howard Dean, I would combine my populist rhetoric with a laser-beam message about Bush's fiscal recklessness: a left-right two-fer. Fiscal conservatives like me are going to be looking in 2004 for someone - anyone - who can control government spending. We know Bush is hopeless and cares not a whit about this country's future fiscal health. What we need to know is that some Democrat won't be so bad.

Sullivan clearly hasn't been paying even the slightest attention. Dean mentions balancing the budget in nearly every speech, in words like: "No Republican president has balanced the budget in 34 years. ...You had better elect a Democrat, because the Republicans cannot handle money"

Slate prominently covered this a while ago; Sullivan must have missed even that.