Ames, Iowa – DNC Chairman Howard Dean addressed a roaring crowd of students and locals here today just as new polls show him to be a legitimate threat to Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democrat nomination.

“They wrote us off after 2000!” Dean shouted to the cheering crowd. “They wrote us off after 2002! They wrote us off after 2004! And some people – like a certain party committee chairman from Illinois – tried to write us off in 2006! But in the end, we showed them who was right all along!”

Dean, who ran for President in 2004 without winning a single primary, was not considered a serious 2008 candidate a year ago. But after getting credit for the shocking Democrat House and Senate victories in November, his stock among Democrats skyrocketed.

“This is the man who put Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in power,” political analyst Charlize Bake said. “Every single House and Senate Democrat enjoying their time in the majority are there due to Howard Dean. What’s more, he did it by being the anti-Hillary. She tries to look moderate. Dean doesn’t bother.”

Indeed, Dean, who is famous for speaking his mind, has done so even more frequently as his popularity and presidential prospects have risen.

“When I said ‘I hate Republicans and everything they stand for,’ I was raked over the coals,” Dean said at the rally in Iowa. “Now, there’s nothing they can do, because they’re where they belong – powerless in the minority!”

Not everyone is pleased with Dean’s performance.

“He got lucky,” one prominent Democrat party member said confidentially from his home in Chappaqua. “The Republicans were divided, and when their base didn’t show up, a Democrat victory was inevitable.”

The New York Times, in an editorial entitled “Does He Have What It Takes,” suggested that “Dean is passionate, yes, but is he in it for Democrats or for himself? John Murtha is working to get us out of Iraq. Pat Leahy is keeping the President from appointing another right-wing extremist to the Supreme Court. What has Dean done for us lately, other than give speeches in primary states?”

The Ames crowd, however, responded enthusiastically to Dean’s fiery speech.

“He showed us he’s the one who can do it,” an Iowa State student who attended the rally said. “He’s been on the front lines. He fought the Republicans and won. And two years from now, when he’s President and we’re out of Iraq, the American people will wonder why they didn’t vote for him back in 2004.”

Dean seemed to bask in the glow, but in the grand tradition of non-announced candidates, he was coy when asked about his presidential ambitions.

“Our job as Democrats is to undo all of the bad that George W. Bush has done,” he said. “Whether I’m the best person for that job or not is up to the Democratic primary voters. But one thing I know for sure: Democrats are on their way back, and soon the Bush tax cuts, the Bush war on terror, the Bush Supreme Court – soon we’ll be working hard to make sure all of those are no more than a passing memory.”