The New Republic is hosting an in-depth online debate about Howard Dean between Jonathan Chait and Jonathan Cohn, two senior editors at TNR. (I guess your initials have to be JC to work at The New Republic, and you also must have "Jonathan" as a first name).

They take opposing viewpoints, and post back and forth; it's been going on for two days now.

It's juicy stuff. A couple excerpts to wet the whistle:

Jonathan Chait

My anti-Dean argument is essentially two-fold. First, Dean's analysis of the Democratic Party (that it's afraid to take on President Bush) is simply untrue. Second, this leads him to propose an alternate strategy--oppose Bush diametrically on nearly everything--that, I argue, would be a political disaster.

And:

You argue that Dean's blunt personality will enable him to win adherents in the political center. I think that may be true of upscale voters--the same folks who already agree with his self-described social liberalism and fiscal conservatism. But downscale voters tend to be just the opposite; they're socially conservative and economically populist. Bush has perfected the art of getting that segment of the electorate to vote against its own economic interests. They like Bush because he seems like a regular guy, and he's tough on foreign policy. I suspect that, among rural and blue-collar voters, Dean's personality and background will actually compound the damage caused by his positions. He comes across as, well, an arrogant Northeasterner. Personality-wise he probably ranks above only John Kerry among the major contenders in his ability to bring downscale voters back into the Democratic fold. That's just a hunch, of course, but it is consistent with the data I mentioned above.

Like I said, juicy stuff.

An excerpt from Jonathan Cohn's response

Which brings me to the final important reason why Dean deserves a chance to prove himself: the competition. If there were some dream Democratic candidate out there suffocating because Dean was sucking up all the political air, then I might favor "stopping" Dean, too. But, dear lord, have you seen these guys? While some of them have perfectly respectable records as public servants--and a few are peddling some intriguing policy ideas--they're awful campaigners. Either they can't connect with audiences, or they have nothing interesting to say, or they're hopelessly (and transparently) led around by consultants, or some combination thereof. And as we learned in 2000, there's nothing like a bad candidate to undermine an otherwise strong political position.

[Sheila's editorial comment: Ouch. To admit that, so blatantly. "He deserves a chance because everybody else sucks." Not a ringing endorsement, to my mind.]

Go check out the whole debate, though. For me, it provided some useful context in the middle of a lot of confusing white noise.