Is this country closely divided - or what?

Yet as The Washington Post's David Von Drehle correctly notes, "The left is once again a driving force in the (Democratic) Party. They do not call themselves 'liberals' anymore; the preferred term today is 'progressives.' But in other ways, they are much the same slice of the electorate that dominated the Democratic Party from 1972 to the late 1980s: anti-war, pro-environment, suspicious of corporations, and supportive of federal social services." The far left has the energy, and that energy is moving Dean - a former physician and governor of Vermont, for Heaven's sake - to the fore.

Remember Vermont? It's the nation's only state recognizing homosexual civil unions, a status encouraged by the pro-homosexual-marriage Dean when he was governor. It's the land of Patrick ("The Worst Senator") Leahy and Republican turncoat Sen. James Jeffords - as well as of Congressman Bernie Sanders, the solitary self-proclaimed socialist in the House.

Dean and Bob Graham are the only former governors seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in an hour when former governors (e.g., Wilson, Coolidge, Roosevelt, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Dubya were or had been governors; since 1900 only Harding and Kennedy have gone directly from the Senate to the presidency) have proved far more successful presidential aspirants. And despite his protestations of centrism, terming pacifist, government-takeover, high-tax Dean a conservative or centrist is like saying - in the words of one who knows him well - "you were the most chaste woman in a Texas whorehouse."

So it won't likely be Lieberman. Nor drones Gephardt or Graham - though possibly Graham will be a vice-presidential pick because he represents the must-win Florida. Nor the Rev. Al Sharpton or former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun. Nor equivocators Edwards or Kerry - the latter oddly ambivalent for a rich senator apparently afflicted with Schwarzenegger's Disease, the inability to be straightforward and clear.

Which leaves Dean, now rumored to be flirting with Wesley Clark to become his running mate - Clark having been the general in place when we won the war for Kosovo. Unless, finally, kittenish Hillary (Hillary a coquette?, toying with no and yes, goes with Dean or decides that now is her hour.

If the economy doesn't rebound big-time, and/or if Saddamites keep picking off American troops, Hillary or Dr. Dean could galvanize the left as perhaps never before, and hardly more than a year from now we could find ourselves in the middle of a 2000 reprise.