Twenty years ago, Gov. Howard Dean ended his run for president. His campaign concluded with a scream – the fabled Dean Scream – but not before it changed the face of modern campaigning. 

The Deaniacs, as his legions of young followers came to be known, proved that small dollar internet fundraising and organizing could help vault the governor of a small state who was little known outside of New England into a powerful insurgent candidate. When Dean split from his fellow Democratic candidates and denounced the Iraq War in the fall of 2003, he became a populist hero and frontrunner in many polls for the Democratic nomination. He poured everything into winning the Iowa caucus, only to come in third behind John Kerry and John Edwards, who would end up as the Democrat’s 2004 presidential ticket that would lose to incumbent President George W. Bush.

The Dean Scream was a viral clip of Dean shouting hoarsely to thousands of followers to rally them to keep fighting as they left Iowa and traveled to New Hampshire. The clip was used by his opponents to portray him as hot headed and angry. It has been described as the first viral political meme.

Dean, a physician and Vermont’s longest serving governor, would go on to be elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2005 where he championed the 50 State Strategy. Rather than focusing only on swing states, Dean insisted that Democrats contest every single district in the country. The strategy proved itself in 2006 when Democrats won control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Dean also launched Democracy for America, a progressive political action committee, which folded in 2022.

Dean has been a consultant focusing on health care and grassroots organizing and teaches foreign policy and public affairs at Yale, his alma mater. He is a frequent political commentator on MSNBC and other networks. 

On The Vermont Conversation, Gov. Dean had plenty to say about every issue (edited for length):

On lessons learned from his 2004 presidential run: I wish I had put together a campaign operation that was better organized (and) that I wasn't so outspoken. But actually, that's what made the campaign. I'm incredibly glad I did it. It was an unbelievable experience.

On the Israel-Hamas War: Israel has a right to exist. There needs to be a Jewish state. But the leadership in Israel has been a disaster. I've met Netanyahu. And I can assure you that he is just Trump with brains. All he cares about is Netanyahu, and he doesn't give a damn about anything else or anybody else. I think that includes the State of Israel.

How President Biden should deal with Israel and Hamas: What Hamas did was a horror show. They had no right to do that. I mean, they tortured people. But what's going on in Gaza now is also a horror show. And nobody has the right to do that and murder 30,000 individuals or civilians, mostly women and children. So there's no right on either side. Both sides need to be pushed. We need to be even handed: we need to be tough on Hamas, but we need to be tough on Netanyahu as well. …And I'd cut off arms sales to Israel if we have to.

On conservatives: The conservatives have lost their mind. They're really not conservatives at all anymore. They're just lunatics.

Why Republicans win: Clausewitz said that politics is war by another means. Republicans understand that. They're ruthless. They govern from the top down, they're incredibly well organized. They can't govern as a result, because this is a democracy, which is no doubt why they want to get rid of democracy. Democrats are intellectuals. We think that the argument is going to win the day. We don't pack the Supreme Court, we don't have corrupt justices in the Supreme Court. We play nice because we believe in democracy, which the Republicans basically don't, unless they can get votes from it. We are lousy at winning elections because we want to play nice. So we don't want to do anything that's going to offend anybody. I don't want to be as offensive as the Republicans are, but I think we’ve got to be a lot tougher and a lot better organized.

On reproductive rights: The right wing basically hates the idea that women are equal to men. (Aborition) is one right you can take away from women and have them less equal. That's what this is about. All these men, these Secretaries of State and these Supreme Court (justices) in Alabama, they would like to go back to the old days where women are in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. Not anymore, it's too late. You let them out. And we ain't going back in.

On the future of the Republican Party in Vermont: I do think there's a future of the Republican Party. It'll be the Phil Scott Republican Party. It certainly isn't going to be the Donald Trump (party). Donald Trump is just mean. And there are not a lot of mean people in this state.

What concerns you most right now: I think what Trump's legacy will be is the same as Orban's legacy in Hungary, or the PIS (Law and Justice Party) legacy in Poland. It'll be very hard to reverse. The damage to higher education (and) to the economy will be huge. Trump talks all about these people who are aggrieved — they're going to be the first ones that get screwed if he wins, because all he cares about is rich people and his own balance sheet. So I think the country's in deep, serious trouble. It'll be the end of America as the major world power. We may not be perfect about human rights, but we do the best job of any of the major countries and the major powers.