Now that was quite the experience. The caucus was really interesting. And really chaotic. By now, I'm sure you all know that Obama won the Democratic caucus. People were really excited about him; being in a college town helps, I'm sure, but that certainly isn't true for the whole state (white and rural much?).
Right from the start, we knew it would be pretty hectic. As we entered the building where our caucus was, as well as 4 or 5 other caucuses, it was packed with people, including candidate representatives handing out stickers and doing a little politicking. As we forced our way towards our room, there was a line of people four across. It went around a couple corners before disappearing into the main room. We got there plenty early, so were able to make it in the room with time to spare.
Around 6:50, they announced that they wanted to close the doors around 7, but they weren't sure if they would be able to get everyone registered and in the doors by then, so they were going to delay the start until they were ready.
Apparently, turnout was huge this year, somewhere around 12% of voters; four years ago, turnout was 6%. Four years ago, there were about 110,000 Iowans at the Democrat caucuses; this year, there were about 225,000. They were expecting 300 people to attend our caucus; about 550 people were there. I would say, the organizers were a bit unprepared and overwhelmed by the number of people. From watching the news, a lot of Independents, and even some Republicans, came to the Democrat caucuses, creating all this chaos.
Not too long after 7, the doors were closed, and the caucus started. Before we started picking candidates, we had a bunch of local 'party business' to take care of. It would have gone much smoother if the precinct presidents had read up on Robert's Rules of Order. The voting part didn't really go much smoother.
The room we were in had about 250 seats, with barely enough room between them for aisles. Add another 250-300 people standing around the room, and it was packed. Fire capacity packed.
The way the caucus works is pretty basic: go stand in the 'corner' of your candidate, then count. As most rooms only have 4 corners, and there were at least 8 choices (7 candidates plus Undecided), trouble was brewing. They wanted to separate the biggest groups (they predicted, quite accurately, that these would be Obama, Clinton, and Edwards - using polling data makes predicting the future much easier. Tell that to Trelawney), but ended up putting them all in the same half of the room. These people should be running for Congress with these problem solving skills.
Finally, they unleashed us. I was leaning towards Obama, but went to the undecided corner - I just wanted to experience the moving around the room, the being approached by different candidate reps, and civics in process. I thought Kimberly was going to go with Hillary - she'd been talking about her the last few weeks - but she went straight to the Obama camp (I'll let her explain her reasoning, if she wants), along with about half the people in the room.
When they started counting people, I was on the far side of the room from Kimberly and the Obama camp. Every other group in the room was done counting before the Obama group - it ended up with just under half the people in the room. Pretty much every other group, except the other top two, were deemed not viable (you need 15% of the vote to be considered viable, which in our caucus was around 80 people, which apparently is abnormally high. Hillary wasn't even viable in Grinnell, which is home to a small Liberal Arts college.] Then, some horse trading of votes began, which I didn't really understand, and didn't really seem to go anywhere (this summary of some of the Des Moines area caucuses has a better description of the horse trading of votes).
I was expecting more people to come up to me to try to convince me to go to their group. But whenever someone talked to me, and I voiced a concern about their candidate, they were just like, 'whatever' and walked away. Aren't they supposed to try to convince me and assuage my concerns? I was slightly annoyed.
I eventually worked my way back over the the Obama camp, where I was counted with the rest - in the end, more than half the caucus was on the Obama side. Clinton and Edwards pretty much split the other half.
Kimberly and I went out for a celebratory ice cream (actually, frozen custard). I was pretty invigorated by the whole thing, despite the lack of preparation by the organizers. I think Kimberly was annoyed by the process, which is understandable: it was disorganized, chaotic, suppresses participation, and voids all secrecy in the voting process. But other than that, there's really nothing to not like.
1 comment:
So, Peter was nice enough to let me explain my own reasoning for my caucusing choice.
Like Peter, I've been really conflicted and unsure about who to support in the primary. I've been leaning towards Clinton (one of my minor pet peeves being that people refer to her by her first name, but all all the other candidates by their last names... just seems a bit sexist to me). Anyway, she seemed to have some things to offer, she's "seasoned", and she has a bunch of the previous Clinton advisers, all good things in my book.
I also liked Biden, for mostly unspecific reasons. He seems reasonable, thoughtful, and all around decent.
But, the last few days, I'd been thinking more and more about what this new president will mean for me and my family. I decided that what I really wanted was a president who actually shared something in common with me. Now, an obvious similarity is a white woman... but what I want is a candidate of my generation (or as close as possible to it, since my generation is still too young to run for president!). Obama is in his forties. He has young children. Perhaps he is the JFK of my generation, I don't know. But he is not of the past. He's not part of the baby boom. He doesn't have guaranteed social security either.
maybe this isn't a good reason either... I certainly disparaged more than a few Bush supporters who liked him because he was "relatable" and "a guy you could get a drink with".
But Obama seems to have strength, intelligence, political astuteness, and hopefully enough popularity to win in the general election.
So, in the end, that's how it boiled down for me. And I don't think I'm alone. From my unscientific polling of a few people near me, people share my reasons. And, perhaps most encouraging and most interesting, is that very few of us care what race/ethnicity/color our president is. The talk radio here discussed this issue in depth after the caucuses, and the callers all pointed out that "we just don't care". It's good, and about time that the US has a non-white male president (and it's certainly impressive that there are multiple candidates in that category for once). But I want a president that will help deal with the messes that the last 8 years have left us with. I think that Obama might be able to do that.
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