MoveOn asked you to sign on to a letter to John Kerry from Huffington and Trippi that included...

You should own September 12th - the spirit of generosity and community that poured forth in the aftermath of the attacks - and the politics of hope.

Offer voters a bold moral vision of what America can be. A vision that is bigger than the things that divide us. A vision that brings hope and soul back to our politics and appeals to more than voters' narrow self-interests. A vision that makes America once again a respected force for good in the world.

Don't be tempted to adopt the familiar - and failed - Republican-lite swing voter strategy. You can reach out to and inspire the fifty percent of eligible voters who have given up on voting. If you do, you will win not in a toss-up but a landslide.

Senator Kerry, I'm ready to vote my hopes and not my fears. So please: Go Big, Ask More!

The fact that Trippi was a part of this "go big" push is not surprising. The early Dean campaign embraced a similar calling for something bigger, and evoked the idealism of our nation's greatest leaders... In Trippi's (and Pat Cadell's) famous "Definitional Moment" memo, Trippi challenged Dean to be a transformational leader.

On June 11th, less than two weeks before Dean's ambitious "Great American Restoration" announcement speech (read it) -- delivered, on a beautiful sunny day, to a massive crowd packing every inch of Church St. in Burlington, the memo read...

The campaign has gotten to a place no one ever thought it could get to.

A confluence of your passion, events of the country, the mood of the voters, and the conjunction of history have produced yet another moment that is with precedence in American history - the transformation of American politics.

It began with Andrew Jackson who transformed America into a Democratic Republic, then to Lincoln who saved it, and to the populist/progressive movement of Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson and then to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.

This is another one of those moments - the place where the future happens.

You have felt this - you know that something bigger is happening here beyond conventional politics. It is what happens every time you tell people that the future of our country rests in their hands - and not in yours. The room goes silent and you feel the hunger in them and the frustration within yourself to explain something that you have yet to find the words to express.

It is the need to throw out all that is transactional and embrace the hunger to transform our country.

If the country wanted a transactional leader i.e. somebody to negotiate deals with various groups and interests, and grease the wheels of inside Washington and make things as they are run better, there would be no rationale for your candidacy - nor would thousands be joining your cause. In fact if the people wanted a transactional leader there are far more obvious choices among this field of candidates than you.

Yet young people are streaming into your campaign everyday, your supporters are energized, travel hundreds of miles, and wait for hours to cheer briefly as you go into an event that they are not even allowed to attend.

This is the thing you must recognize - the thing above all others you must understand. This campaign is not about you - it may have started out that way but you have touched something more powerful than any other force in our nation’s history. It is bigger than you, bigger than any single issue, and you can not turn away from it or your responsibility to move from a transactional leader who has a health care plan - to a transformational leader that rises to the historical moment, and leads a movement to save and restore America’s ideals - and invite - no demand that every American rise to the challenge.

You have touched a nerve of unvanquished hunger, and almost limitless need to transform our country.

With later references to Tom Paine's "Common Sense" -- amidst all the seemingly necessary appeals to the base -- the Dean campaign hit upon this intoxicating "go big" invitation to participate in something bigger, something better.

Barack Obama struck the same vibe in his speech today at the DNC's winter meeting, where, in 2003, Dean made his own splash.

And while the content of Obama's speech today was certainly inspiring, similar to the highpoints of Dean's rhetoric, the one striking detail to me is what Obama, quite intentionally, didn't do [my emphasis] ...

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama struck an understated tone. Unlike other candidates, he had no entry or exit music when he spoke. His campaign's table offered no stickers, buttons or other trinkets — merely a sign-up sheet for volunteers.

In fact, one had to look pretty hard to find the table at all. Its sole identification was three tattered pieces of plain, white paper with "Obama's Exploratory Committee Table" printed on them.

All of this was purely intentional, according to an Obama campaign official. He said it would be hypocritical to say, as Obama has, that you're running a different kind of campaign while using traditional tactics.

Of course, a candidate like Obama, the current sensation of the Democratic Party, may not need to put on a big show. Even in his speech — interrupted by applause several times — he made little mention of himself, his story or his abilities. Instead, he asked the crowd to transcend partisan politics and embrace hope.

If the recent moves -- the bold Iraq De-escalation Act, the support for universal health care, the voting fraud bill -- seem to be signaling a bold agenda for Obama's candidacy, this symbolic spurning of traditional political trappings only adds to the promise.

The themes of civic responsibility and personal humility, of course, are not new for Barack Obama. His Harvard Law years' writings hit many of the same notes. But that one blind quote highlighted above really sparked my imagination. Maybe, just maybe, the Obama campaign can pull off what the Dean campaign could not sustain.

If Obama and his staff can avoid the internal battles that watered down Dean's transformational message -- apparently as early as the "September to Remember" -- they will, in the words of Huffington and Trippi, "win not in a toss-up but a landslide."