Democracy in Action: Talk about the challenge of putting on this primary.

We're going to have to recruit a volunteer army of up to 4,000 people.  Our goal is to open every polling place in the states.  Now there has been some talk that we could collapse some polling places.  I really think we ought to open all the polling places.

And really if you think about it you see the excitement in the room and know that this is a great opportunity; it's almost an excuse to rebuild the party.  These nine candidates, being first in the nation like this, gives me as chair the chance to go out and to tell county chairs, the executive committee, okay, team, we wanted this, we got it.  Let's go build.

So it's first that human infrastructure.  Up to 4,000 people.  Then it's money and probably about a half million dollars on the low side.  And with the fundraising for that, we'll start right away.  We had a good weekend here as you probably know.  From what I'm hearing--I haven't seen the accounting--but I'm hearing $250-300,000.  So after we pay off our debts from the last electionn cycle, we'll be in the black a good bit and that'll give me some resources with our staff and our executive committee going forward.

And other challenges to putting this thing on?

Well I think there's an emotional hurdle because it's new.  And so there's salesmanship.  So it's not just you--I ask you, you come--or we pay you, you come; it's you need to understand how special this is and what a part of democracy and citizenship this is.  This is new for South Carolina, for Democrats and with a large field like this and being first, it's not like when it was the Republicans and it was just McCain and Bush here; this is very, very different.  So I think there is an emotional selling proposition to make people identify with how vitally important this is to our country's democracy...

I want to turn the primary, the structure, over to the South Carolina Young Democrats.  I was a Young Democrat; that's how I got invested innto party politics, and young Democrats in this state are growing in numbers like they haven't since the 1970, but we'll lose them if we don't give them something to do, something meaty, and telling them you're in charge...  Now at the same time people like me that have some gray hair, they're not going to turn around and run away and say good luck.  We become the coaches, the mentors, but they're the greatest communicating generation of our lifetime.  They can recruit people on cellphones and PDAs and e-mail like nothing you've ever seen or I've ever seen.