Anyone who doubted Al From and Bruce Reed's warning in their memo last week about the dangers of Democratic presidential candidates speaking only to party activists should take a look at Saturday's AFSCME candidate forum in Iowa.

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake hooked up 30 union members to dial meters to measure the intensity of their favorable reaction to the seven candidates who appeared. (Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Kerry were present only by video, and were not "dialed.")

The results speak for themselves, and show why we've never been big fans of focus groups, which encourage politicians to tell audiences exactly what they want to hear: According to the Des Moines Register, Kucinich was first with a score of 78 on a scale of 1 to 100. Sharpton was second with 76. Gephardt was third with 75. Dean was fourth with 73. Edwards was fifth with 69. Graham and Mosley-Braun trailed with 66 each.

Call it a psychic flash, but we somehow doubt this will be the order of finish at the Democratic Convention in Boston in July of 2004.

Unfortunately, party nominating caucuses are a lot like focus groups, with their tendency to put pandering first. And like the Iowa AFSCME audience, they reflect views that are vastly different from those of rank-and-file Democrats around the country, not to mention the Independents who often dominate not only general elections but even primaries.

As From and Reed wrote in their memo: "Democrats who champion the mainstream values, national pride, and economic aspirations of middle-class and working people are the real soul of the Democratic Party, not activists and interest groups with narrow agendas."

The campaign of Gov. Howard Dean took great umbrage at this memo, urging supporters to "annoy the DLC" at the same time it was denouncing us for being "divisive." As The New Republic pointed out, the whole episode only underscored our point. In the past, we sometimes praised Gov. Dean's record in Vermont. If he were running for president the way he governed, we would be praising him now. But you don't have to be a centrist to grow weary of a campaign so quick to attack others' views and scream foul whenever others challenge its own.

Every time Gov. Dean suggests that unlike his opponents, he represents the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," he's being divisive. Every time he denounces his opponents as "Bush Lite" and suggests that only a Republican would support education reform or stand up for America's interests in the world, he's being divisive. And ironically, he's doing this in a transparent effort to appeal to the same fringe activists who used to do the same holier-than-thou number on him in Vermont.

We hope other candidates will have the courage to tell the American people what they need to hear, not simply promise activists what they want to hear. We don't need a focus group to know they call it the beaten path for a reason.