Reply #7: I saw that upclose and personal over dinner there one night.

[patrice]

The thing about the Dean campaign was that it invited everyone in (BTW, I still believe in doing that). There many who were complete newbies and some people temperamentally unsuited for what they were doing BUT there was no process and not enough time for any given group to ID and naturally address the overbearing types to get them to adapt functionally to the needs of the situation. I listened to at least one example of someone who was in the group I was with locked in a struggle to the death with another Democrat over health care. I was shocked. I don't have a whole lot of experience, but even with the little I've done, I knew what I saw was seriously harmful.

I also saw at least one case of what I thought of as "raiding the chicken coop", a certain type of volunteer approached by an unknown other, who then disappeared with them (out the door and down the street toward a coffee shop that was in the same direction as the Kerry campaign quarters, which were just a couple of blocks away) and did not return to the task that we had been working on together. Not terribly surprising given the ambitious nature of *some* volunteer politicking.