My Colorado caucus experience

My lack of political knowledge came bubbling up a few weeks back when I got a call from the Obama campaign asking me if I was on their team. I said that I was pretty sure I would be, and they said "great, see you at the caucus on February 5". And I said, "Oh yeah, I'm definitely planning on going to vote, I always vote!" To which she replied "Ok, I'll see you at Whittier Elementary at 6:30pm". And I said "You bet", hung up the phone, and thought HUH? I can only go vote at 6:30pm? What the heck is this CAUCUS thing?

After poking around a few websites, it appears that a caucus means you go into a big community room at the same time with a bunch of your neighbors and ALL VOTE TOGETHER. Wow. Now I definitely had to go. How could I miss this? I get a huge kick out of large group dynamics (like All Hands Company Meetings) and this sounded like it would be rife with dynamics. Turns out I was right!

I got there at 6:30 and it was immediately clear they had severely underestimated the space needs for this group. It was standing room only with people lined up outside of the school gym. They started by saying what an outstanding turnout they were getting all over Colorado and laid down some ground rules, as they assumed most of us hadn't ever been to a caucus. To which my initial thought was "hm, did everyone else move here in the last 4 years?" I then surmised that maybe it was George Bush that brought everyone out of their houses, but I found out in the paper today that Colorado has never been on Super Tuesday before, and therefore we didn't MATTER as much.

We could expect to be there for at least 2 hours. The most important rule of the night was that all votes from our site had to be called in by 8:55 pm or our votes wouldn't count. We would remain in the big gym for the ground rules and then some speeches on behalf of the candidates that were to last no longer than 2 minutes a piece. These "speakers" were somehow chosen by the Clinton/Obama groups, I'm guessing they lead some local campaign group. We also heard from supporters of senate seats and city councilman, although we wouldn't be voting on those that evening.

The Clinton speech was first. A woman somewhere in her 50's spoke eloquently about the specific plans Hillary has laid out, how strong she is, how she can hit the ground running and be effective immediately upon entering office. Ok, point for Hillary. Then Barack's orator got up, eschewed the bullhorn everyone else had been using, and shouted loudly to the crowd about how Barack was all about "change" and "hope" and "unity". He spoke passionately about meeting the man on many occasions, how they had spoke in depth about how this country needs a change, and he's he most "stand-up" guy you'll ever meet. There was a comparison-reference to JFK, which I thought was a HUGE stretch, but whatever. If I have to be perfectly honest it was a lot of hot air. Then each precinct breaks up into separate rooms to discuss and eventually vote.

Our precinct meeting was in a tiny 2nd grade classroom, woefully inadquate to hold the 118 people who had shown up. I'm sure the entire night was full of fire code violations but we all went with it. The first thing we learned was that our precinct was able to send 5 delegates. They described the process very quickly about where those delegates go, and how they get wittled down over the course of many district and county meetings, but I don't remember specifics. I do remember that by the convention Colorado would have 55 delegates, hopefully our representatives would be voiced somewhere in that 55. The other important thing to note is that because we had 118 people, each delegate represented 18 people (118 divided by 5). You had to have 18 people in support of your candidate to get a delegate representative.

Then we took our first straw poll, which consisted of a show of hands for various candidates. We started with undecided which had 5, and then went to Hillary who had 13. This meant Barack had 99 supporters in that room. Wow. I guess I wasn't expecting quite the domination there. It was obvious that we were going to leave with mostly, if not all, Barack delegates. But before we were quick to judge we took a step back to remember the purpose of the caucus which is to actually try and help the uncommitted make a decision (and solidify decisions that have already been made). So then we moved to a group forum where people raise their hand and say what they do and don't like about all of the candidates. A few women there were adamant about staying uncommitted, because apparently there is a groundswell movement across the US for people to go uncommitted in order to force the candidates to be more progressive and specific with their plans. To that, I say, GOOD LUCK.

You can probably surmise that most of the people attending the caucus were passionate and opinionated about politics. Otherwise would you really make the effort to commit 2+ hours of your weekday night to go sit in a small room? So you can imagine that a few of the exchanges got pretty heated and there was a lot of eye rolling, sighing, and mumbling under breaths for some of the opinions, oops sorry facts, that were being presented. The very first comment came from a guy who basically said that he liked Hillary but he was going to support Barrack because he was more electable. That comment got about 50 nods in the room, and a whole bunch of supporting comments followed about how the Republicans would attack Hillary's war vote, her battles with Republicans over the years, her husband and her failed Health Care attempts as First Lady. There were some sheepish comments in support of Hillary but you could tell they were defeated. Well, except for one woman who passionately described how it was TIME FOR A WOMAN TO BE IN OFFICE (with her first in the air), and how the idea of smart powerful women being bitches needed to go. I wanted to raise my hand and say "I like Hillary, but honestly, don't you think she has a little bitch in her?." Discussions followed about the dream ticket of both candidates, and which person would be more likely to accept a vice president nod (we all agreed Obama).

Then another straw poll was taken to see if any of the uncommitted or Obama's had moved over to Hillary. I think she maybe gained one or two in the process. BUT they still didn't have 18 people in support, which meant it was a done deal. Until someone brought up that if all of the uncommitted's and Hillary's got together and unionized, they would have at least one "non-Obama" delegate. That seemed interesting to me. How bad did these people not want Obama? One woman said it seemed more likely for the Hillary supporters to switch to uncommitted because of those staunchly uncommitted fools and their groundswell of progressive motivation. So we re-took the vote and ended up with 14 uncommitted's, 4 Hillary's and 99 Obama's.

So all 5 of our delegates were Obama delegates and I quickly handed in my vote slip and scurried out the door.

I will always plan on going to the caucus as long as I live here, but I wish it was a somewhat less involved process. Most people I saw from my neighborhood sent only one family member as the other one was home with the kids. I feel like there might have been more participation if it was a primary. But it's interesting to think about the comments made last night and whether or not it will have a long-term effect on any decisions.

Final round of teething

Delaney is officially showing the early break-throughs of all 4 of her last teeth. Of course they are all molars and they are all coming in together. Poor girl has a thing with rapid fire teething... one tooth doesn't come in, and the next one follows, etc. When she has "a" tooth come in it means at least 4 at once. One time she had 6 teeth coming in at once and that could NOT have felt good.

I am very glad that they are here and that it will be done in a month (or two). I am excited for teething to be over. My child is not one of those that rolls with the teething punches, so to speak. Her eating is all messed up, she has a perma-runny nose and she is far more prone to very silly little tantrums. The worst side effect, by far, is the sleep disruption. She has awakened before 6am for the last 3 days, and strongly resisted going to sleep at naps and at night. I feel bad for her but there is only so much I can do at 5am. So come on molars, get on through and we can be done.

Tomorrow is the big day for me. Courtney's Super Tuesday. The truth is I have felt pretty lousy over the last week and have definitely had some pretty strong pregnancy symptoms. But I am still cautious and wary and just hopeful that everything turns out ok. I'm excited that I FINALLY get to find out tomorrow. This has been a very long two weeks.

And I plan to go to my local caucus tomorrow evening and am prepared to stand on the Obama side. I want to go to the caucous because I have never been to one and also because I feel like it's important to get your voice out there early in the process. Primaries seem exciting to me and I feel like that's where the real election happens. So often our elections are already decided by November and this is our chance to select who we think would be the best of the choices available. I like Hillary and have respected a lot of what she's accomplished over the years. I read her book years ago and found myself drawn to her strength and determination. But she's too polarizing and I think too much of this nation dislikes her. It seems realistic to think that if she were to get the nomination it would bring out every Republican imaginable in an "anger vote". Thus, I will be on Barack's side, as I *think* he has a better chance of winning come November.