You never forget your first time. For me, my first time was this afternoon . . . first time taking part in the political process at a level beyond just mailing in my ballot a few times a year and making an occasional donation, that is.
Today I attended my first caucus. Follow along as I describe the process, from the first time I found out about the caucuses until I got to be . . . well, we’ll see what I got to be in a minute.
I almost missed the caucus this year. Up until about Tuesday, I didn’t realize Washington had a caucus. I had every intention of voting in the primary the state decided to hold on February 19th until I learned three important facts:
- Washington State’s Democrats were scheduled to caucus on February 9th;
- All of Washington’s delegates to the county, and eventually state and national conventions, would be chosen in the caucuses; and
- None of the delegates would be chosen in the primary. (On the Democratic side, that is. The Republicans chose half of their delegates through the caucus system and half through the primary. Why? I don’t know.)
So I talked my daughter into driving me to the caucus location, which had the dual effect of bringing a second person to the caucus, and getting me there without having to walk some huge distance since I don’t own a car and the busses don’t run very close to the elementary school the caucus was being held at. I dug out my EFF baseball cap, put on my Benjamin Franklin T-shirt, and off we went.
At the door we were greeted by two older women wearing “Hillary ’08” stickers. They asked if I’d like a sticker. “Well yes,” I said as politely as I could, “but I’d much rather have an Obama one.” By the time we got to the caucus location (a half hour early, I might add) the Obama volunteer manning the information table at the entrance had run out of stickers. We picked up a flyer instead and made our way to the registration table. At the table I found the clipboard for our voting precinct, labeled “SHL 32-0357.” SHL for the city of Shoreline, 32 for the 32nd Legislative District, and 0357 for our precinct number. We signed and printed our names, addresses, phone numbers and presidential candidate preferences. When we signed in we were able to either state a preference for one of the candidates, whether currently in the race or not, or state “Uncommitted.” We were told we could change these preferences later.
Now keep in mind that the caucus was being held in the combination gymnasium/cafeteria of an elementary school, so the seating was elementary-school-sized lunch tables with attached elementary-school-sized benches, a size I grew out of many years ago. Fortunately I was able to sit side-saddle on the bench so I could talk to some of my neighbors. The table contained various pieces of literature (impeachment literature, a resolution calling on the eventual nominee to commit to getting us out of Iraq no more than one year from election day, that sort of thing) and a party-sized sandwich provided by our precinct committee officer, a pleasant fellow named Ken Juell. My daughter and I ended up sitting opposite a very nice lesbian couple who brought their daughter Bailey, age about six. She was carrying a sign that was the best at the caucus, although to be fair its only competition was a big Kucinich sign someone was waving. It would have been awesome even if there had been many more there.
I thought this was pretty clever, and starting improvising a song for Bailey by chuffing a Bo Diddley rhythm:
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom, ba-ba-ba-bom, I like Obama!
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom, ba-ba-ba-bom, and so does my mama!
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom, ba-ba-ba-bom, and so does my other mama!
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom, ba-ba-ba-bom . . . I need another rhyme for Obama!
“Comma!” she squealed. Pretty good for a six-year-old.
The room started filling up, and I recognized a few of the faces. At a table across the room was a fellow who rides the same bus I do from time to time. My wife’s dentist walked past but didn’t see us. As I looked around at the sea of faces of every ethnicity, gender, religion (one of the women at our table was wearing an Islamic head scarf) and age (two of the girls in our precinct were high school seniors), I heard one of Bailey’s mothers tell her, “Look over there! It’s Freddy’s mom!” Freddy is of my grandson’s friends from school and church. We were happy to see someone we knew at our table. We struck up a brief conversation with Freddy’s mom, who then went over to say hello to Bailey’s mothers. “Our daughter is going to get married to her son,” one of the mothers informed me. “At least that’s what she tells us.” Bailey pretended not to hear.
At 1:30 sharp the meeting was called to order by Chris Eggen, a Shoreline city councilman and the area coordinator in charge of the proceedings. He made a few announcements: rest rooms are through the double doors in the back, any resolutions will be considered at the county convention, did everyone sign in, we would follow Robert’s Rules of Order. I was glad he mentioned the resolutions. There were some grammatical errors in the resolution I found on the table and I was wondering how I would bring them before the body of the caucus; it wasn’t something that would even be discussed, so I didn’t worry about it.
After the introductions about half the groups went off into various hallways, nooks and crannies to caucus. Our group stayed where it was, but with most of the other groups out of the gymnasium it was much less crowded and easier to speak to the people in the group.
Ken started off by introducing himself, asking for a secretary to keep minutes of the caucus and record the votes, and explaining the rules of the caucus. First the secretary would total up the preferences from the sign-in sheets and announce the totals. Then we would have some time to talk about our choices in an attempt to inform and persuade the uncommitted attendees, and at the end, if anyone wanted to change their preference, they would have a chance to do so.
So the secretary tallied up the preferences:
Obama: 30 votes (52%)
Clinton: 20 votes (34%)
Undecided: 7 votes (12%)
Kucinich: 1 vote (2%)
We then got about 30-40 minutes to make the case for our candidates. A woman started off by making her case for Obama. And then suddenly I found myself speaking to the group:
I was never interested in politics until about five or six years ago. The quote on my shirt explains why I started paying attention. (I pointed to the picture of Benjamin Franklin and the famous quote attributed to him, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”) I realized about then that George Bush and his cronies and enablers in the government were trampling our liberties, destroying the Constitution and destroying everything that makes America, America. I knew I had to do something, so in 2004, I will admit it. I voted against Bush. I voted for Kerry, make no mistake, but it was a vote against Bush.
I’ve also taken a bit of a circuitous route to come to support Barack Obama. I like his message of hope. I like the way he inspires people. I like the thought that, for once, it will be nice to vote for someone instead of against someone else. Barack Obama. Thank you.
The Me of six years ago would have been stunned that I would even say that much about a political candidate. It felt pretty good, though!
Others made their cases. Clinton’s supporters touted her experience (and Obama’s relative inexperience), her ability to work within the system to get things done, and their desire to see a woman president. Others pointed out that one man’s experience is another man’s baggage. I added, “Keep in mind that the Republicans still blame everything that’s wrong with this country on Bill Clinton, and if Hillary is the nominee they will dig up every single sordid thing from their past. Whitewater, Vince Foster, you name it. Barack Obama has said he would not be swiftboated. I like a fighter.” I don’t know if I was telling anyone anything they didn’t know, but I wanted to point out that if Clinton is the nominee, that is what we have to look forward to. One of the high school seniors I mentioned earlier said she was all in favor of a woman for president, and was convinced it would happen, whether this year or in fifty years; but she wanted it to be the right woman.
I talked more than I expected, and probably more than I should have. I would have talked more, but two people brought up points that I otherwise would have. One fellow said that no matter who we caucused for today, no matter who the eventual nominee is, it would all likely come to naught without commanding majorities in the House and Senate. So we should support Democratic candidates across the board, but we should also keep in mind who would be the best Presidential nominee to help those candidates get elected. (I don’t remember for sure if he said that last part, but by golly I would have, had I not felt I was already talking a lot.) The other pointed out that we have a choice between two good candidates, and whoever the uncommitted caucusgoers decided to support, they could hardly go wrong.
Then, after we were all talked out, it was time for those who wished to change their preference to do so. We waited a few minutes for the process to play out, and eventually the final vote total was announced:
Obama: 36 (62%)
clinton: 19 (33%)
Uncommitted: 2 (3%)
Kucinich: 1 (2%)
So most likely what happened was, five uncommitted attendees changed their preference to Obama, and one Clinton supporter switched over to Obama as well. My guess is that the five uncommitted attendees were leaning toward Obama but were waiting to hear what everyone else had to say; the switch from Clinton was a surprise, though.
According to the rules of the caucus, the final vote meant that since our precinct had six delegates allocated to send to the Legislative District Democratic convention, four would be Obama delegates and two would be Clinton delegates. (Those delegates would choose from their number to attend the King County Democratic convention, who will select the delegates to the State Democratic convention, who will select delegates to go to the national convention in Denver. And I thought science fiction fans had a lot of conventions!) Had the final vote tally been the same as the initial poll, the allocation would have been 3/2/1, with one delegate attending and voting as “uncommitted.”
I struck up a conversation with the lone Kucinich supporter, a man who said he’d been an activist for social justice all of his adult life. His views on the state of the country and its future under Clinton, Obama or Kucinich were interesting — interesting enough, in fact, that I missed the beginning of the delegate selection process. By the time I caught up with the voting, four people had already volunteered to be delegates for Obama at the Legislative District convention. I was glad to see that one of the delegates was the young woman who spoke earlier about the desirability of the right woman candidate. Ken then called for volunteers to be alternates, to attend the convention if one of the elected delegates couldn’t make it.
I looked at my daughter.
My daughter looked at me.
We volunteered to be alternates.
So there you have it. In a few short years I’ve gone from a guy who believed in the aphorism, “Don’t vote, it only encourages them” to an alternate delegate to a political convention.
As we left the building my daughter asked me, “Do you remember when you were supporting John Edwards and you made fun of me for liking Obama?”
I hadn’t made fun of her — I had actually told her I liked Edwards’ message, but I could get behind Obama from what I knew about him at the time. But being a storyteller’s daughter, she has learned not to let the truth get in the way of a good story.
“‘Shut up,’ he explained,” I said.
We were both grinning.