The discussion on Meet the Press was not that bad.
In particular, Gwen Ifill surprised me by noting that the criticism of Dean is coming from Washington Democrats who strongly opposed his election as Party chair and not from Democrats outside of Washington (even in the South).  When Russert showed Harold Ford's comments about Dean's comments not playing in Tennessee, Ifill pointed out that Ford is one of those Washington Democrats she was talking about.  

Bob Kerrey apparently joins TNR's Peter Beinart on the list of Democrats trying to make support for the Iraq War a litmus test for national security strength and fitness for party leadership.

Given how things have turned out in Iraq, this attempt to convert a policy disagreement over the Iraq War into a national security litmus test is the height of chutzpah.

For their part, Al Gore, Bob Graham and Howard Dean (who all supported the 1991 Gulf War to expel Iraq from Kuwait but opposed the 2002 Iraq War authorization vote) never implied that Bob Kerrey was too liberal to assume a leadership position in the Democratic Party because Bob Kerrey voted against the first Gulf War resolution in January 1991. And, if they had, they would at least had a little more compelling case for their position given how the two wars turned out.

Tim Noah of Slate had a great column in April about ostracizing the people who were right about the Iraq War.

http://www.slate.com/id/2105434

This quote from Noah's article sort of sums up the Beinart/Kerrey view:

"Not long ago, I spoke with a Democratic moderate about the war in Iraq. He said he considered support for the Iraq war to be a necessary prerequisite to assuming any powerful role in the party. It showed that the person in question was willing to project U.S. force abroad. But wait, I asked. Do you still think the Iraq war was a good idea? After some hemming and hawing, he admitted that he'd rather we hadn't gone in. Then why make support for a mistaken policy a litmus test? Because, he repeated, it shows that the person in question is willing to project U.S. force abroad."