] If Howard Dean were an Internet company, would he be the
] smash success of eBay, or the now-defunct Pets.com? The
] momentum Dean established over the summer and fall bore a
] striking resemblance to the straight-up curve of the
] dot-com boom. But, post-Iowa, that curve is pointing in a
] different direction, and now the question is, as was the
] case with so many of those dot-coms, was there every
] really a good product beneath the hype? Or is Dean really
] just buzz, nothing more than a pet food-selling sock
] puppet who, buoyed by his campaign's Internet savvy,
] momentarily came to seem like a really good idea?

Salon.com Technology | Howard Dean's fatal system error