By Dick Polman,The Philadelphia Inquirer

WASHINGTON – The rebels have stormed the citadel, and now they’re taking over.

Howard Dean’s ascension to the Democratic chairmanship – an event virtually unimaginable last year, when he was racking up 17 losses in 18 presidential primaries – signifies a historic power shift within the party, from the Washington establishment to the foot soldiers who are fed up with defeat.

He took the stage here Saturday, moments after his election by voice vote, amidst much exultant squealing and impassioned bellowing – the kind of acclaim that typically greets Eric Clapton when he plugs in his guitar. A thousand party diehards sprang from their chairs, and he fed their fire by declaring, “Strength does not come from the consultants down, it’s comes from the grassroots up!” And he vowed to reconnect Democrats to red-state voters, “precinct by precinct, door by door, vote by vote, year by year.”

It’s not clear how he plans to sell those voters on the party’s “socially progressive values,” aside from finding better language and avoiding provocative rhetoric. Nor is it clear how an Iraq war critic can drive a strong national security message. But making history may have been sufficient achievement Saturday.

During the last 150 years, by tradition, the Democratic chairman had been an insider with powerful pals – a crony of the president, or protege of a key senator, or a front man for fat-cat donors. And the choice of that leader, by the voting members of the Democratic National Committee, had generally been “a rigged deal,” as party strategist James Carville puts it.

Dean breaks the mold. Never before has the leader of a grassroots citizen army captured this job. The same guy who once inveighed against “the Washington politics-as-usual club,” and who once referred to members of Congress as “cockroaches,” has been given a mandate to shake things up – courtesy of the party’s 447 voting members, who hail from all 50 states and who no longer intend to follow the old guard.

All four of Maine’s voting members of the Democratic National Committee – Maine Democratic Party Chairman Patrick Colwell, Vice Chair Marianne Stevens, Sam Spencer and Jennifer DeChant – joined Maine Gov. John Baldacci in supporting the former Vermont governor for the national party’s top post.

“This is a revolutionary redefinition of the party chairmanship,” said Brian Lunde, a former national party official who, during the 1980s, helped several Democrats win the chairmanship. “We are moving into totally uncharted waters.”

But Dean didn’t get the job by wowing the activists with liberal red-meat rhetoric. He got it by talking nuts and bolts – promising, for example, to pump big bucks into the state parties and to energize the demoralized. Former skeptics seem satisfied; as Ed Kilgore, an activist in the party’s moderate wing, remarked the other day: “Dean chose to stress the stuff that unites Democrats and causes the least amount of heartburn. It was tactically smart.”

Many grass-roots Democrats also felt they owed him for services rendered in 2004. After flaming out on the presidential trail, Dean didn’t sulk or disappear. Operating below the media radar, he set up an online money-raising operation and stumped all year for local candidates – more than 600 – in both red and blue states.

“That produced an enormous amount of loyalty,” said Philadelphia lawyer Mark Aronchick, a party activist who traveled frequently with Dean last year. “He proved the point, “What I was asking you to do for me, I’ll do for you.’ He showed that he was for real. And many of us liked the fact that he was turning on the younger generation – kids expressing all the idealism that we wanted our own children to have.”

But Dean still sparks unease among Democrats; in a new CNN poll, only 31 percent of Americans view him favorably. Lunde said, “There are two Howard Deans, and we don’t know which one will show up for the job. Will it be the “bomb thrower,’ from the early primary season, or the “reasonable moderate’ who was governor of Vermont? … I just test-drove a message to friends around the country. I said, “Hey, you’re a Dean Democrat now.’ And I could tell they were cringing.”

Indeed, amidst all the fulsome praise from insiders who plotted in vain to stop him (House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is suddenly lauding “the force of his personality, and the depth of his ideals”), it’s clear that Dean is still a polarizing figure within his party.

Depending on the source, he’s either a breath of fresh air who will make his brethren proud again, rebuilding from the bottom up; or he’s a loose cannon who will be crushed by the Republican machine, which will contend that, by choosing Dean as leader, Democrats seem bent on wooing only the Bush-hating, left-leaning citizenry.

Aronchick disagreed: “This isn’t about ideology. It’s about having fire in the belly, passion for the fight, punching back when you’re being punched. It’s about no longer thinking that the only way to appeal to voters is to be gentle and nice. And, in terms of organizing and fund-raising, it’s about matching the Republicans at their own game.”

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Waring Howe, a DNC voting member from South Carolina, concurred: “Dr. Dean would call me up and say, “We need to get people enthused, get them feeling good about being Democrats, and I know I can do that.’ He struck me as having matured since his presidential bid. Besides, this job is all about cheering on the troops.”

But Dean’s reputation as an antiwar firebrand and defender of gay civil unions strikes many Democrats as the wrong resume for a new leader – especially after a national race that seemed to hinge on national security and personal values. They fear that their red-state candidates will be tagged by the GOP as “Dean Democrats,” and suffer accordingly.

“This is electoral suicide,” said Dan Gerstein, a New York consultant and former aide to Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman. “He can raise all the money in the world, but if we look like we have the wrong leadership, we will still lose. By choosing Dean, it looks like we’re catering to the peacenik wing of the party. Dean is like a narcotic. He is designed to make us all feel good and help us avoid reality. … His election is a signal that we still haven’t hit bottom yet.”

There is broad concern that Dean is too much of a celebrity for the job, that he will hog the limelight and turn off the red states. As one Deaniac wrote online the other day, in the liberal blogosphere, “There is a risk of creating a cult of Dean the man that will turn people off.”

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Dean appears determined not to be a lightning rod. When asked by reporters Saturday to respond to those who question his fitness for the job, he said, “I’m not going to reply to blind quotes,” a reference to anonymous sources.

When reporters specifically named a source – the Republican party – he repeated, “I don’t respond to blind quotes.”

And when asked about his past opposition to the war in Iraq, he said, “I’m not going to get into policy issues,” even though, in his speech Saturday, he cited everything from health care to national defense.

Actually, the grassroots people “want him in the limelight. Arizona party chairman Jim Pederson said, “(We) want Dean to be the high-profile spokesman, not a congressman or a governor or a senator. We desperately need a voice that can counter President Bush, and we’re frustrated that we haven’t found that voice yet.” (That remark can be read as a rebuke to the party voice of 2004, John Kerry.)

Most of all, they want Dean to preach the importance of shoe-leather politicking – the kind that propelled President Bush to victory in pivotal Ohio, thanks to a strong state party and a network of local volunteers. They’ve already seen Dean put the idea into practice.

Bob Mulholland, a California Democratic leader, said: “Here’s a guy who’d send out an e-mail last year, and in response, 30 people would come out and knock on doors for some obscure county supervisor candidate. A few weeks ago, Dean came out to talk to the 65 California (DNC) members. That kind of meeting generally gets 100 people. This time, 500 showed up – Dean people. It was like a tailgate party before a big Eagles game. What other DNC chairman could ever get anybody to do that?

“Now he has the chance to show that the insiders were wrong when they wrote him off. That’s a motivator. We now have a chairman whose agenda in life is to prove himself.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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