The last time I went to a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, everybody was going ape for Howard Dean. That was in February 2003 and the former Vermont governor’s Cinderella campaign was still in its opening moments.

First came the subterranean tremors of enthusiasm, followed by the meteoric rise and the newsmagazine cover stories, the explosive rallies and barnstorming tours, and then, of course, the tragic flameout, leaving Dr. Dean’s presidential ambitions in smoking ruins.

Since then, the Democratic Party has endured an electoral humiliation that was traceable, according to many sensible observers (e.g., me), to the leftward forces unleashed by Dr. Dean’s aborted crusade.

So here we were again last weekend, exactly two years after Dr. Dean’s memorable debut, one year after his tumble to Earth, and three months after the party’s electoral disgrace.

The Democratic National Committee was gathering once again in a Washington hotel. And everybody was going ape for Dr. Dean. Who says the Democrats are the party of radical change?

Needless to say, the meeting of the committee and the greeting of Dr. Dean did not precisely replay like a scene from “Groundhog Day.”

Two years ago, Dr. Dean appeared before the Democratic committeemen to challenge the party’s Washington establishment, famously declaring that he represented the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” and promising an alternative to spineless congressional leaders who bent to the will of an all-powerful President Bush.

This weekend, Dr. Dean came not to challenge the party’s establishment but to seize it for himself. It wasn’t hard to do. The party’s establishment has long since accommodated itself to Dr. Dean.

On Saturday, he was unanimously elected the party’s chairman for the next four years – and probably its most influential and visible spokesman for the next two, at least until the 2008 presidential election campaign begins.

Dr. Dean made a sober presentation, as a good establishmentarian should. He was “thankful,” he said in his acceptance speech, and “humbled,” and “ready to get to work.”

Among the bromides, however, there was a contradiction, suggesting Democrats and their new leader are unwilling to think through the implications of their 2004 defeat.

On the one hand, Dr. Dean and others spoke of the need to “change this party.” Fair enough: A party that has lost all but three of the last 10 presidential elections, and by all odds is doomed to remain a congressional minority for the next six years, is ready for change.

On the other hand, Dr. Dean affirmed there was nothing wrong with the party beyond its timidity in declaring its own greatness, a timidity that could be corrected by being “really organized” at the grass roots and on the Internet.

That theme – there’s nothing wrong with us that a little envelope-licking, doorbell-ringing, and Web logging can’t fix – was reinforced by the video that introduced Dr. Dean Saturday morning. In it, a parade of the new chairman’s supporters declared their unwillingness to alter their party’s course.

Labor organizer Alexandra Rooker, for example, declared she “was sick of the experts” who say the party must “move to the right” to regain an electoral majority.

“Well, we ain’t movin’,” she declared on the video to loud applause from the assembled Democrats.

Yet the belief that more elaborate organization is the missing key to victory overlooks essential truths about last fall’s election.

One is that the party, as an organization, has seldom functioned better than it did in 2004. Democrats enjoyed one of their largest voter turnouts ever and enlisted 233,000 volunteers, a record (according to the DNC). Their presidential candidate received more votes than any other Democratic candidate in history, buoyed by the most successful fund-raising effort the party has ever seen.

At the same time, however, the mobilization unleashed ideological forces that pushed the party to the fringe and further alienated the mainstream voters the party needs to win. And those forces are still at work. MoveOn.org, an activist legacy of Dr. Dean’s presidential campaign, continues to poison the political debate by airing ads – dismissed as “false” by the nonpartisan Annenberg Political Fact Check – saying President Bush plans to cut Social Security nearly in half.

As it happens, both of these developments – the superb organizational success and the increasing reliance on fringe groups – were encouraged by Dr. Dean’s predecessor as chairman, Terry McAuliffe.

It was Mr. McAuliffe who tapped neglected donor pools while also embracing the left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore, echoing (to choose one example among many) Mr. Moore’s groundless charge that Mr. Bush had gone “AWOL” from his National Guard service.

A chairman truly bent on “changing the party” would try to decouple these two developments – the energized organization and the ideological extremism – since no amount of money will draw moderate voters to a party they perceive as flirting with the fringe.

Is Dr. Dean the man to undertake the decoupling? Experience doesn’t suggest an encouraging answer. At the DNC’s Eastern Regional meeting in New York on January 29, Dr. Dean appeared with other candidates for the DNC chair. There were more bromides, but also this: “I hate the Republicans,” Dr. Dean said, “and everything they stand for.” He added, however, that he did admire their organizational skills. Dr. Dean will be a chairman in the McAuliffe tradition, which is bad news for Democrats.

Mr. Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News.