Thoughts From Yesterday's Caucus
Yesterday morning, we got up around 6:30 a.m., and headed to Lincoln/Garfield High School in Wallingford to check people into the 43rd Legislative District Caucus for the Hillary campaign.
Once everyone was checked in, we corralled into the auditorium, where we listened to a few hours of question/answer (a lot of people talking about whether or not you should switch your vote), a few speeches, some time-killing jokes (??), and the surrogates for each campaign. The guy who spoke for Kucinich gave one of the most honest speeches of the day, no surprise. McDermott gave a really nice ambivalent, pro-Democrat speech. Can't go wrong there, in a room full of Democrats.
What was odd was Hillary's surrogate—we assumed it was Ron Sims or Jay Inslee, since they've been at every Hillevent. But, turns out it was Sean Astin. You know, from Goonies? Lord of the Rings? We didn't really understand, either, and neither did so many people in the audience. In fact, the poor guy was heckled. He stumbled through a speech. We went out for a hot dog.
photo from the Seattlest Flickr pool, courtesy of ntisocl
Sometime around 1:30, we were split into sub-caucuses—Obamaniacs in the gym, Clintonistas in the auditorium. We'd signed up to run as a delegate to the state convention, and were told we'd get 30 seconds to speak. In the first 20 seconds of our speech, we managed to get out our name, occupation, and something about healthcare. Then we flipped out about there not being nearly enough time to convince these people of why they should vote for us, so we just named issues, said thank you, and let the next person go.
At least half of the people running had a lifetime of community service and political experience, law degrees, jobs where they work day in and out to save the environment, battered women, children, or other noble tasks. Somehow getting up and saying, "Hey, I write about folk music," didn't seem like a viable argument, but we did it anyway. There was a 17-year-old boy who gave an eloquent speech about his support for Hillary. There were a number of college kids and young professionals wanting to represent her; the fabulous gay boy who pointed out his fabulous pink shirt and argyle socks, which we couldn't help but give him credit for, even though that shouldn't really count.
There were 100 people running for 14 slots (seven women, seven men), and we didn't stick around to see who was chosen. By 4 p.m., we were completely wiped and through with the auditorium seats, ready to have a meal, a beer, and liberate our dog from its crate. We're not sure how long it took for the Obamaniacs to figure out the 53 delegates they were voting for. But when we went to the gym to look for recycling bins, we peered in to see candidates standing in the middle of the room with their sign in the air, twirling around so everyone could get their name. We didn't envy their task.
It was complete insanity, in that order-in-chaos sort of way. There's something radical and unbelievable about the notion that this is part of how we choose who will lead the free world: two rooms full of college kids, queer Capitol Hill young professionals, middle-aged women and older people who cast their first vote for FDR, worked on JFK's campaign, etc., standing there now for Hillary Clinton, drawing their names in large block letters on a piece of poster paper, telling jokes, eating hot dogs. In the downtime, we're separating trash, making plans for post-caucus beers, reading books by David Sedaris.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Pennsylvania, Indiana, or North Carolina, the next President of the United States is having coffee with the townfolk, looking them in the eye and promising change. It's all very bizarre and surreal. We used to be of the mind that presidents were chosen by powerful moneymakers behind closed doors. They probably still are to some extent—we guess that remains to be seen in this election. But as boring and drawn-out, and at times (Sean Astin?) odd as yesterday was, we were glad to be able to do our little part on behalf of 43-1863.
