(politics) what the footsteps sounded like six weeks ago

While there are various obituaries from the Dean campaign running today, I went back and spent some quality nostalgia time reading punditry and coverage of the race from before the race in Iowa tightened. An example from January 7th (Slate): "Just as a press release at the Oct. 9 Phoenix debate showed that the Dean campaign considered Dick Gephardt its main obstacle of the moment, these flyers, however mild, demonstrate that [Wesley] Clark has become a big enough irritant to merit a swat of his own. 'The Howard Dean campaign is starting to get a little nervous,' Mo Elleithee, the campaign's New Hampshire communications director, crows at a conference call slapped together to gleefully respond to Dean's 'negative attack flyers.' 'They're hearing our footsteps.' "