No news is good news for Dean

Howard Dean's road to the DNC chairmanship keeps getting clearer. Going into this week, it appeared that there were only two potential roadblocks big enough to stop Dean's momentum. The first was the endorsement of the Association of State Democratic Chairs. If the chairs came together behind some other candidate, other voting members of the DNC might jump on the anti-Dean bandwagon. But on Monday, the chairs voted overwhelmingly to endorse Dean. The second potential roadblock was labor, but the AFL-CIO has just announced that it won't be endorsing anyone. Dean would have preferred to pick up the AFL-CIO endorsement, of course, but his opposition needed it more. The candidates will fight it out for individual union endorsements now, but no one will get the big, momentum-swinging punch that the AFL-CIO would have provided. Put this one in Dean's column, and move him a few squares closer to victory on Feb. 12.