There's a thread over on Kos about Karl Rove wetting his pants about a speech Dean gave in early 2003. That's sort of amusing. A couple people in the thread continue to speculate about the possibility of Dean as a VP pick. I've pretty much decided that's very unlikely -- although it would be incredibly ballsy on Kerry's part and would get him (or the DNC, depending on the timing) $2,000 from me immediately.

A while ago I said that of the several names being overtly floated, that I leaned towards Clark. On the other hand, Clark did hire Chris "The Squanderer" Lehane and did some nasty oppo on Dean. [via GitM]:

That same week Ben Holzer, the research director for General Wesley Clark's campaign, arrived with Lehane, who was then working for Clark, in Washington, D.C., for a series of visits to the major television networks, newspapers, and newsmagazines. They toted a three-ring binder that contributed as much as anything else to Dean's rapid demise. The Clark campaign had classified the stories in it as singles, doubles, triples, or home runs, based on the damage they were expected to inflict. Holzer and Lehane offered producers and reporters exclusives on many of these stories with the proviso that if they were not used quickly, they would be handed to a rival. In the hypercompetitive world of political journalism this pretty much guaranteed swift airing or publication.

[...] Six days later, on December 15, Dean declared with typical candor that the capture of Saddam Hussein "has not made America safer"?a comment that stirred [ed: media-hyped] public doubts about his fitness for the presidency and also about his increasingly visible hotheadedness [ed: that's one characterization] and frequent gaffes [ed: aka the truth]. Against this growing uncertainty the Clark campaign set off a barrage of stories portraying Dean as hypocritical, dishonest, and incompetent.