The McGovern kids (I was one) who ran for Precinct Committee spots stuck around for years (and are still mostly around.)  But a lot of others just drifted away.

I don't say this to hijack the conversation.  It's just my personal experience with a campaign that was largely youth-motivated.

Just thinking in terms of class, the Republican, independent, and affluent voters (including the college youth who largely owe their current education status to their college-educated parents) may represent a problematic constituency that the "Big Tent" Democracy needs to bring into the liberal-progressive fold. I am certain they want middle-class tax cuts and more affordable college tuitions, but do they want more social services, urban development, and pre-school to K-12 federal programs (their local schools in suburban districts are not the ones that are failing)?

Together they could conduct a truly historic campaign incidental to race or gender. They could tour the state TOGETHER, giving speeches about Democratic organizing principles. They could criticize the Republican philosophy of governance. They could attack McCain. They could engage voters on all sorts of topics.

They would do this with the idea that either one of them would be good for America and far, far better than any Republican. And they could tell the voters the truth, that either one would be a step in the right direction and to vote their preference with that in mind.

THAT would be the way to build a legacy one could be proud of whether or not one becomes President.

THAT would, IMO, be the perfect response to the perfect storm this primary season has become.

The deep divisons created by Rove between the party has driven people to rise up. The most common statement I hear, "I want Obama for our nominee but I'll vote for Clinton if I have to."

Democrats will NOT lay down and allow their country to be run the way it was. We've been party building since 2000, along came Obama and Democrats jumped out of their comfortable chairs and have gone to work.

The strong sense I get is, get the nominee business over with so we can start banging on doors.

The implication in the argument of those challenging Sen. Obama is that Sen. Clinton would be the superior candidate to "fight" on our behalf.

I am not at all convinced that she would "fight" harder or be more effective at achieving democratic/progressive goals.

If she wants partial credit for 8 years as First Lady on her resume, then she gets partial "credit" for the horrid Don't Ask - Don't Tell policy.  

Was she "fighting" to bring the troops home before public sentiment really turned against the war?  No, she adopted a very centrist position criticizing Bush, but not advocating troop withdrawals

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/11/AR2005121100846.html

She was quoted saying "I reject a rigid timetable that the terrorists can exploit, and I reject an open timetable that has no ending attached to it."

Here is what the late and great Molly Ivins had to say.

http://freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1304

"Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges."

Before you can get them to be activists even once, you have to get them out to vote.

Before you can get them out to vote, you have to get them interested in politics enough to bother.

We old folks really, really liked the Clinton years.  (REALLY did.)  And we don't believe the story being sold that the Clintons had nothing to do with what was good about the time and everything to do with what was bad....

And if I'd been in the senate in 2002 -- and especially from New York -- I may have voted just the way Hillary did.  And in heart of hearts, I think Obama would have too.....

Really divisive and dishonest politics - Rove-style - at times. But always assured they have the media to blame it all on Clinton.

I do think they believe that the Clinton supporters will eventually come around if Obama is the nominee for one reason - because Clinton supporters are the real, dyed in the wool, long-time loyal DEMOCRATS who are outraged by what the Obama campaign and the media are doing, but in the end will hold their noses and vote for anybody to stop another republican in the WH.

Taken at face value, the notion that large numbers of people have become involved in his campaign, and, it seems, will be doing so for the next 8 months - thus becoming even more intimatly involved on a day to day basis with working to elect the Democratic ticket - this strikes me as lending a rather high probability to the notion that they will continue to be involved after the election.

I have written on this for years. I am not going to rehash all of that.

If you deny what is obvious to me, I do not see the point of the discussion.

What I thought would be the more interesting discussion would be a defense of the type of campaign Obama is running as an act of Party building.

That did not come. The rest of you carry on as you wish. I am bored with this.

I think there will be some of that from Obama's ground game people, assuming he wins the nomination, if only because he can then make the case (with a lot of force) that he can only effect change by bringing a lot of Democrats into office in the House, Senate and State Houses.  Without a majority big enough in the legislative houses, everything will founder on the Republicans' obstructionism.

Is it better that they never get involved in a Dem campaign at all? Or that they get involved in a Repub one instead?

 And it seems to me that while people are enthusiastic about their candidate, not many are enthusiastic about the Democratic Party. Many of us think the Democratic Party sucks. They can't  win any more when they are in the Majority than when they were in the Minority. Yet the Republicans seem to get what they want from either position. What's to be excited about in being a Democrat?

Some of us have all ready left the Democratic Party in disgust. We have become Independents or have joined the Green Party. Most of us would never vote for any Republican, let alone 100 Years McCain, but that doesn't mean we will vote for the Democrat Nominee either.

I naively believed that people who worked for Democratic candidates wanted to see Democrats win.  In this case, the poisonous atmosphere between the two campaigns hurt the eventual nominee and the Dems lost a close race in Nov to a weak GOP candidate.

There was a lot of backbiting and rancor that stemmed from personal antagonisms between staff members of the respective candidates.  Of course, that kind of behavior also goes on within campaigns as well.

Some of the anger can be attributed to frustration at putting your heart and soul into a campaign only to come up a little short and some to self-interest, losing out at an opportunity at a plush job in the winner's office or being able to put a big "win" on a resume for future consulting jobs.

A true-blue partisan Democrat would argue, "The reason we don't have universal health care, the reason our troops are still in Iraq, the reason we haven't done anything about global warming, the reason union membership is declining, is because the Republicans are determined to stop us from making the change we need. To really get things done, we need to elect a Democrat to the White House and more Democrats to Congress."

Hillary Clinton says things like this a lot. In debates, she's said it's important to have a Democratic president, even if it's not her. She opened her Iowa remarks by saying that it was a great night for Democrats because of the high turnout.

Obama's campaign is all about him. It's about he is uniquely suited to bring "change" to Washington. The problem with Washington is that Democrats and Republicans bicker instead of working for the people. We had too much divisive politics in the 1990s. He wants to be president of the United States of America, with an emphasis on United. He argues that he's better than McCain, but rarely does he ever argue for the Democratic Party over the Republican Party. More often, he casts a pox on both their houses.

That's a funny old adage but, to a great extent, very true.  

I have been an "independent" for years, though, except for once in 2000 have voted democrat in the hopes of staving off a disastrous administration.  A lot of good that did.

This time around, I went to caucus for Obama and became a delegate for his nominee campaign as well.  Assuming he wins the nomination, I will work for his presidential campaign.  If he does not, I will not work for Clinton's.  I will vote for her, but much the same way I voted for John Kerry in 2004 -- what choice was there?

I had recently been struggling whether to get more involved with the democratic party, in general, such as attending my legislative district meetings, become a voting member of the party, etc.  In the end, I decided that my duties as delegate, and my fundraising efforts for Obama's nomination campaign are enough for now.  After he becomes President, I go back to supporting progressives, greens, independents, etc. in other areas of government and think an Obama presidency will open the doors for a more progressive government, generally.

To me the most likely outcome is that many of the activists who supported Obama will be driven to support other politicians who support his agenda who, surprise, will also be Democrats. Even if Obama loses.