Progressives' hero & Obama thorn Howard Dean: "We all voted for change we can believe in. If we don't get it, we'll get some more change in 2010."

From The Washington Post:

Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean is emerging as a thorn in the side of a White House that effectively swept him out of Washington, regularly challenging President Obama and Congress as he crisscrosses the country preaching his progressive vision for universal health care.

Although he is lending voice and brand to the liberal cause in the intraparty health-care debate, Dean hardly considers himself a spoiler. Rather, he sees his role as fighting for progressive values, asserting again and again that health-care reform without a government-run insurance option is hardly reform at all.

"We all voted for change we can believe in. If we don't get it, we'll get some more change in 2010," Dean roared . . . .

[In his appearances, many of which are organized by the Service Employees International Union and] which are not coordinated with the administration, Dean is helping to fuel what could become a calamity for the White House.

"What Howard is doing is principled but destructive," said a Democratic strategist and former Dean adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the intraparty debate. "If health-care reform goes down because of the public option, it's going to be the liberals that bring it down, the Democrats doing it to themselves."

Dean received a hero's welcome when he addressed hundreds of progressive bloggers last week at the Netroots Nation convention in Pittsburgh. He was their favored messenger in 2004, when his innovative campaign fueled the rise of the "Net roots" in the Democratic Party. Now, five years later, Dean is speaking for them again.