US: "I feel like singing in this wonderful place," said Howard Dean, as he took the microphone on the stage of the sumptious 120-year-old Grand Opera House in Oshkosk on Thursday. "But I'll not," the former Vermont governor said with a pained smile. "If I do, CNN will play it 633 times", reports Conor O'Clery from Wisconsin.
That is the number of times that American TV news networks are estimated to have aired Dean's famous "scream" speech - which hastened the free-fall of his once insurgent campaign - in the four days after his Iowa defeat.
Nothing, however, could be further from the image of a candidate out of control in the performance of Mr Dean in the opera house. With his wife Dr Judith Steinberg Dean smiling shyly on the stage behind him, the former Vermont governor discussed medical problems ranging from lead poisoning to haemophilia with health workers from the town on the shores of Lake Winnebago who filled the circle, balcony and "royal" boxes.
It was a seminar more than a campaign rally, though the candidate showed a flash of his combative side when asked if he would heal partisan differences as president.
"I'm not going to Washington to be a nice guy," he said. "I'm going to Washington to kick the right wing out."
It is widely believed however that Mr Dean will not win Wisconsin's showdown primary on Tuesday, and that it is Senator John Kerry who will be going to Washington.
The enthusiastic young "Deaniacs" are still in evidence, putting up signs and selling "Dean Deck" playing cards (Dean is on the four aces and George Bush and Dick Cheney are the two jokers) but his campaign staff are clearly demoralised and the once cocky travelling press corps has shrunk and is subdued.
The post-mortem on the Dean campaign has already begun. Some television executives have agonised about their role in running so many clips of the "scream". CNN's general manager, Princell Hair, thought his network overplayed it because of the demands of a 24-hour news cycle. It took on such a life, said Paul Slavin, senior vice president of ABC News, that "the amount of attention it was receiving necessitated more attention".
Dean's former manager, Joe Trippi, thought it was totally unfair.
"It shouldn't be an anvil that you keep hammering to destroy his candidacy," he said.
Ironically Dean's exuberant yell was hardly audible to the noisy crowd in Iowa, but an extra-sensitive microphone amplified it for television. It had a devastating effect because it confirmed doubts about the candidate's temprament. Once the clear front-runner, Dean is now so far behind that the only picture the news photographers wanted in the Grand Opera House was of him heading towards the sign marked "Exit".
As he does leave the stage, Mr Dean leaves behind a party that he energised, just as Eugene McCarthy did with his anti-war campaign in 1968 before being overtaken by Robert Kennedy.
The Dean campaign also demonstrated a revolutionary ability to raise cash through small donations over the Internet. So much poured in that he was able to do without federal matching funds and thus avoid the $45 billion spending limit on a publicly-funded candidate. Kerry followed suit and is now in a better position to match President George Bush's $200 million war chest.
But it was the anger of Dean in the early days which really energised the Democrats. At the first big candidate debate in March in Columbia, South Carolina, the most numerous and most passionate supporters outside were holding Dean placards. Pro-war candidates like John Kerry and John Edwards, then wary on national security, took note and as the months went by adopted much of Dean's sharper and more confrontational anti-Bush rhetoric. "He touched a nerve, and that jolted everyone else," David Axelrod, a strategist for North Carolina Senator John Edwards, told USA Today.
When the first Democratic contest was held in Iowa last month his rivals were sounding more like Dean, and some appeared more electable, which helps explain why the candidate who fired up the Democrats came third. Since then the outspoken former Vermont governor has slipped further in the polls. He has not won any of the 14 primaries and caucuses and, barring a major political upset, will soon run out of time and money.
After the opera house performance, Judy Dean left for Vermont, where she had "eight patients to see" in her medical practice.
Her husband, meantime, seemed to acknowledge that the steam has gone out of his campaign. "We have the opportunity to change the country," he told supporters. "But we are losing that opportunity as the election draws closer."