That is what I entitled my blog of my thoughts on Iowa. Now I guess I better give some thoughts again seeing as my state, Minnesota, voted yesterday.
I was a co-precinct captain (or helper or something) for my precinct in the inner suburbs of Minnesota. A whole Senate District (28 precincts) met at one highschool.
It was crazy.
I got there a hour and a half early to help out. If you were just walking in you’d think it was a organizing meeting for Barack Obama. Obama volunteers everywhere. No one else. I found my precinct and with the help of my brother and fellow precinct captain got to work posting handmade Obama signs. We were the only organized candidates supporters in our room.
It was like that everywhere. Committed grassroots Obama supporters from all around the country won last night. The grassroots won. The netroots won. We won.
I think Chris Bowers said it pretty well:
Obama dominates caucuses: Check out the results in Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota and North Dakota. Obama completely dominated by more than 2-1. That is a sign of massive, raw, activist power.
Activist power indeed!
Do you know what? We won every single precinct in the building. In total we won 2-1 in the entire building with nearly 3,000 votes. It seemed like even more though. Starting at 6:30 when the voting started crowds of people surged through the doors and into the building. It seemed like a stampede. For the first half hour or so I stood by the door as more and more people streamed into my precinct. I didn’t know that many people even lived in my precinct. Then after awhile one of the Obama coordinators came and asked for me and my brother. We already had a precinct capitan holding down the fort and there were angry people upstairs so we went upstairs. It was a mess. A giant line for one precinct. Some people were leaving. People didn’t know what precinct they were in and so they were standing in that line. Running out of ballots. Total chaos.
You see know one thought that nearly four thousand people would come, because that’s never happened before. Eventually we were able to shorten the line and get everyones vote in. So I headed back downstairs to see how my precinct was going. It was time to count. I watched as the piles of ten stacked up for Obama. Final result? 149 – 43 for Obama. What a night. I met my congresswomen, state senator and representative, Franni Franken (wife of Senate canidate Al Franken) and hundreds of friends and neighbors who were committed for change, even if it meant waiting in a big line.
Then I came home to the results. Wow. When I first heard about Barack Obama and started following the Draft Obama movement I never would have believed we could come this far. It was my first caucus. It was my brothers first caucus (and vote!), it was my fathers first caucus, it was my mothers first caucus since collage, it was our neighbors first caucus.
All around the country there was a wave of new Democratic voters hungry for change. Many of them voting in a primary for the first time. Exited for the first time. But do you know what? It was one thing that won it for Obama. I will say this again. We won it for Obama.
By we I am talking about that “activist power” Chris Bowers talked about. The bloggers, the internet activists, the grassroots organizers, progressives, those who favor a 50 state strategy. The people powered movement.
Obama won because of his campaigns better organizing. He had a amazing field staff in every state.
Obama won because the internet. Micah Sifry, founder of TechPresident has a great article up on that today. Just read it all. But I can’t resist quoting the ending of it.
The old winnowing process, which was mainly about wooing big donors and winning news cycles, is no more. Obama seems to be carving a new path to the nomination, one that has gotten him to parity, and maybe even given him the edge going forward. If he wins the Democratic nomination, there will be all kinds of reasons why. But if that happens, let’s hope everyone gives the internet and all the campaign-driven and activist-driven organizing it has powered on his behalf a big share of the credit.
People power won big last night. But this fight is not going to end. It will be a battle until at least Ohio and Texas. Maybe onto Pennsylvania, maybe to the convention, nobody knows. Let’s make sure that people power wins the day though. The Obama campaign is on the verge on possibly even beating R0n P4V1!’s one day record for fundraising. You see his rivals loaned their campaign 5 million dollars recently. Already nearly 6 million has been raised. If you donate I promise it will not go to a blimp. What it will go to is electing a progressive president by building a winning grassroots campaign for change. In addition I would love it if you added you’re gold to the Netroots for Obama pile. It was previously called the Obamathon and we raised over 30k in about a week, now the fight continues and so I thought I’d change the name but keep the spirit of change going. So if you’ve got some spare change for change. Please drop in in the change jar.
To action!
