The Washington Post attempts to explain why.
It's New Year's Eve and the tap is open. The Edwards people, with Budweisers in hand, crowd the section of bar closest to the pool tables. Nearby, some Lieberman interns sway/dance, free Bacardi Bat necklaces swinging on their necks. Someone from Gephardt's campaign is lighting a Camel Light, and the Clark guys are scattered near the TV screens.
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The unofficial rules for the young staff who work the New Hampshire primary have always been thus: By day they are rivals, press secretaries out-spinning each other, field directors fighting for every vote, interns standing at busy traffic corners holding their campaign posters, shouting each other down. But half an hour from midnight, they are fellow partiers, bumming cigarettes, buying each other beers, bound by the weird facts of their daily existence: long, long days, addiction to campaign adrenaline, month-to-month leases.
This year, however, the rest of the staffs complain that Howard Dean's people don't play by those rules. Stop by the Strange Brew or the Wild Rover in downtown Manchester late on a Friday or Saturday night and you're likely to find any combination of Democratic staffers drinking, letting off steam, talking about anything other than work. But to the great annoyance of everyone else, the Dean people are almost never there.
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The other campaigns talk about the Dean people with the same mix of condescension and envy that one might use toward an overeager colleague who just doesn't understand when to turn it off.
"I'm sure they think they're starting a revolution," says one press secretary for a rival campaign. "Just like when I was in college, and I used to listen to Rage Against the Machine a lot, and I thought I was starting a revolution, too."
If the Dean faction exists at the get-togethers, it's in the negative, the gaping hole you can't ignore. If they're not here, where are they? Are they still working? This late? What does their office look like? Do they really sleep in their cars? How many of them are there, anyway