I went down to Dallas City Hall Plaza this evening to stand in the scorching heat for a Howard Dean rally. There were several hundred Dallasites there. I heard one Dean worker say she was disappointed there wasn’t a bigger turnout — Austin, the liberal capital city, had a much larger Dean rally — but it was about what I expected for Dallas. Dean was a late-show, but he fired the crowd up real good. He’s a sharp, vigorous stump speaker, and his delivery made his liberal boilerplate speech sound lively. I thought his best shot at Bush was on the economy, bashing the president for fiscal irresponsibility. It’s risible, not to say cheeky as hell, for the most liberal of the credible Democratic contenders to bash Bush as a big spender, but regrettably, the president deserves it. That said, Dean’s my favorite Democrat, for the same reason he’s Karl Rove’s. Go, Howard, go!