US: Can Dean win back support to close the gap on Kerry? Conor O'Clery, North America Editor, reports from Hanover, New Hampshire, where Democrats vote today.
In Hanover, an early-colonial town in western New Hampshire, Howard Dean is almost a local boy. Here they know his record as governor of Vermont, the neighbouring state just a mile away across the frozen Connecticut river.
They know him not as a liberal, as he is popularly depicted for his opposition to the Iraq war and for legalising gay unions, but as a dispassionate, non-ideological governor.
The Dean they saw over the years on Vermont television - which is received here - was one who supported the death penalty, appointed conservative judges to ensure longer prison sentences, opposed the legalisation of marijuana, balanced the budget, cut taxes, made it harder to claim welfare, won approval from the National Rifle Association, and only signed the civil unions law because it was forced on him by the courts.
It was the pragmatic side of Dean that was on view on Sunday night, when the former governor made a pitch for the women's vote at a forum on women's issues at Dartmouth College in Hanover.
According to recent polls, Mr Dean lags behind Senator John Kerry by 13 points among women, but more women than men are still undecided. On women's issues Dean is a liberal, no-nonsense decision-maker, according to the account he gave of his time as governor.
"Affirmative action for women is absolutely critical as long as hiring is controlled by people who look like me," he said, noting that half his cabinet in Vermont were women.
His self-assured performance showed that some of his confidence, badly shaken by his Iowa defeat, has returned, especially with one poll yesterday showing him only three points behind Mr Kerry (31-28 per cent), and some of the cockiness is back too.
Asked when a woman would become president he replied: "In 2012; after I get done, Hillary will be president." He was accompanied at the forum by his wife, Judith Steinberg, whose initial reluctance to join her husband on the campaign is now seen as a plus, according to women I spoke to at the event. Her shy presence over the weekend has softened Dean's image since the Iowa "scream" and helped him to recover some lost ground.
"I never felt I should drag her around," said Mr Dean, who visibly revels in her company, but "it is important that people would know who she is" if he were to become president. As a doctor, his wife had said she could not leave her patients to go on the campaign trail, but she cancelled her appointments again yesterday to be by her husband's side in New Hampshire.
"Whether it's our careers, raising our children or being there for the ones we love, we all struggle and juggle to do it all," she said, "and I'm here to tell you Howard gets it."
Mr Dean's aides in Hanover gave out video cassettes they made of the couple's first joint TV interview, broadcast on ABC's Primetime last Thursday and showing him flatteringly as a family man. They have made 50,000 for distribution across the state, evidence of how vital the repackaging of their candidate has become.
Mr Dean still uses his opposition to the Iraq war, which propelled him from obscure governor to front-runner, to highlight differences between himself and Senator Kerry, who supported the congressional resolution authorising war.
Now that the Massachusetts senator is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, it is he who is coming under fire from the Republican Party and conservative commentators as a liberal like his fellow Bostonian, Senator Edward Kennedy.
Mr Kerry, who entered politics as a protester against the Vietnam War, is an advocate of gay rights and gun control, and has a strong record on the environment. But his record has left hostages to fortune, such as his vote against the 1991 Gulf War.
On Sunday evening, Mr Dean attacked him for voting not to go to war "when the oil wells were on fire and the troops were in Kuwait". Mr Kerry accused Mr Dean of running a "negative campaign" and, when out knocking on doors on Sunday, said his rival was weak on foreign policy issues, and favoured higher taxes for middle-class voters.
Mr Dean is clearly not finished, but he needs a surprise victory or a close second to regain the momentum lost in Iowa, and to start the process of convincing Democrats in South Carolina, and other states that vote on February 3rd, that he is still electable.