With the expected selection Saturday of "firebrand" Howard Dean as chairman of the DNC, Democrats are "choosing confrontation over conciliation in their early responses to Bush in his second term," the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Washington Post says "two questions swirled around the Democrats as their national committee assembled yesterday to select a new party chairman: Can Howard Dean cure what ails the party, or is Howard Dean symptomatic of why those ailments may be so difficult to cure?"
The Wall Street Journal notes it's been a year since "Dean let loose the scream that became the coda of his presidential bid." Now, a "nervous Democratic Party is about to find out what he learned from it."
Meanwhile, the New York Times observed that at a recent appearance, Dean "was careful to put his new and subdued self on display."