George,

I got home from Iowa an hour ago, after driving straight through. I put just over 2300 miles on the car, 400 of that in Iowa.

I looked at your page. In Larry Sabato's discussion of Dean, the words 'young volunteers' appears. This is a blunder.

Yes, the Iowa volunteers included some 20-somethings, but they also included plenty of people (like myself) who can get a senior discount at a movie theatre. In fact, it would
be more accurate to say that the Iowa volunteers were a reasonable approximation of the demographics of American population, with the exception that blacks were underrepresented.

One reason that this blunder persists and is repeated, is that if you just go into a Dean campaign office and look at the people doing the work, the field officers, you see 20-somethings. However! In discussions with some of these people in Iowa, I heard from them that they were uncomfortable telling senior people like myself (with job title equivalent to Professor) what to do! We had set aside our titles and normal guises, and were just volunteers there, and we expected the 20-somethings to tell us what to do, in spite of the 40-year differences in age.

Don Wells (electronic mail, January 21, 2004)

Editor's Note: See also Virginians in Iowa for Dean, Outside Campaigners Flood Iowa and Deaniacs Drive to Iowa for Winter Break.