It was about four years ago this winter that Howard Dean's longshot campaign for president first started gaining some traction around the country, thanks in large measure to his ability to connect with young people via the Internet.

He never made it to the finish line, although being chairman of the Democratic National Committee isn't too shabby. In looking back, the source of his "netroots" strength was the surprise of that campaign cycle. Dean spoke often of how awestruck he was at walking into wildly enthusiastic and well-organized campaign events that weren't put together by his staff, but by people in the blogosphere.

This time around, it looks like Sen. Barack Obama is getting the same kind of love, if you believe the story in the latest edtion of The Nation. The article compares the grassroots event organizing that targeted Dean in 2003-04 to what Obama walked into at George Mason University in Fairlfax, Va., on Feb. 2, a week before he announced he was indeed running for prez.

Here's a snippet from the piece: "The room exploded, and if it hadn't fully registered before, Obama and his staffers understood that there was genuine potential for something like a Howard Dean 2.0 movement that could be anchored by an even younger grassroots base empowered with newer, sharper online tools."

Joe Trippi, the architect of Dean's insurgent bid for the White House comments laterin the same article that "The Obama campaign had nothing to do with it, and they're already at 250,000 people. That's amazing--the Dean campaign, it took us six months to get to 139,000 people."

Whether you like Obama or not, the article will bring back memories of the heydays of the Dean campaingn. To read the full article, click HERE.

-- Sam Hemingway