I wrote an email to
Deven about my caucus experience, so I figure I'd repost it here in case anyone cared:
I walked downtown after work and ended up number 72 out of 315 in my precinct (that's 7 delegates if you're keeping score at home). Even at 6:00 you could tell the Obama part of the room was filling up the fastest, primarily with younger people and old guys with beards. There was a pretty small group of middle aged women in the Hillary camp, a group of middle aged dads in the Richardson camp, and a mixed bag (including my wife) in the Edwards camp. Dodd, Biden, and Kucenich only managed a handful of folks each.
The caucus chair--a crazy-eyed bald guy with a red beret and a blue Dave Lobeseck shirt on--called the meeting to order and each group had a 2-3 minute speech about their candidate. Except the woman from the Edwards camp who decided to read her entire 2.5 page letter to the editor about why she's voting for Edwards. She got the "wrap it up" sign from the beret-guy like 6 times.
By this time the public library conference room--which i imagine could only have had a capacity of about 120 people--was packed with 315 giddy democrats, making it virtually impossible to determine exactly what people were standing for what candidate. So beret-man had the brilliant idea of moving some groups into the hallways and other groups into separate meeting rooms which prompted a series of motions from the floor declaring this unfair to the groups not in the main room. I can't say i disagree with them but when theres 100+ people in the Obama camp and 6 in the biden camp you can't exactly force Obama in the hallway.
Enough people obliged however and the first count was taken. Fourty-eight people were needed for viability and Obama had pleanty, Edwards had fifty-some, but Hillary and Richardson were just out of reach in the low forties. The few dozen people in the other camps were asked to give up hope and make a new decision. This gave Hillary viability with exactly 48 people, and Edwards enough for two delegates. But still left Richardson with only 44 people.
Then things got ugly. It's about 7:45 and people are ready to wrap this thing up but this CRAZY bitch from the Richardson camp grabs the mic and makes a panicky motion for 10 more minutes. She's shouting about how the whole precinct is screwed from the beginning because of the district lines and that she has a heart condition and can't stand in a hallway and democracy takes "f_ing time damnit" and if we don't like it we can go to Pakistan. So one of her crazy friends seconds her motion for the extra ten minutes and beret-man has to take a vote from the crowd.
After a resounding NAY! from the group beret-man says she's been voted down but the crazy purple-shirt-bitch will not give up. She continues shouting about democracy taking time even though she's clearly been outvoted, and just to appease her a few people shout "5 minutes" and another vote is taken and... seeing as we've already killed another 10 minutes with the arguing match between her and the crowd... the crowd gives a resounding YES! to the extra 5 minutes.
Of course nothing changes in five minutes, Richardson get no more people, and beret-man tells the Richardson people to move into another camp. Two minutes into the moving though crazy-bitch is back shouting about how she didn't hear the end of the five minute moving period and it was unfair and she has "two perforated ear drums" and democracy takes "f_ing time." By now beret-man tells her he's calling sheriff if she doesn't back down. I think somebody must have escorted her out at this point cause the shouting match over and the Obama and Edwards camp were cheering every time a new Richardson person came to their group.
I think most folks defected to Obama because he ended up with 4 of the 7 delegates, Edwards got 2, and Hillary managed to keep her 1.
All in all a pretty entertaining first time caucus experience.
Eric said,
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