Caucus
All the mountain passes were closed, so Seattle had no excuses not to caucus on Saturday afternoon. We headed up the street to our local church basement to practice some democracy. The scene was total chaos. Overflowing with people, few knew what to expect or even knew what caucusing involved. Having both gone through the process before in ‘04 we knew what to expect. It was about as chaotic as I remember last time being, just with tons more people. Our precinct was being run by two women who got the job just by the fact that they showed up early. It was unclear to me if they had ever been to a caucus before let alone run one. (Next time I will definitely volunteer to run our precinct.) About eighty people showed up for our precinct, the vast majority for Obama, a few Clinton supporters, and a handful of undecided voters. After the initial vote a few speeches were given, a mother with baby in arms gave a speech for Hillary (accord the baby’s bib he appeared to be supporting Obama, no reason was given). A few first time caucus goers gave speeches for Obama (I don’t understand these non-voters, everyone in my family votes, its just assumed). I don’t know if we swung any undecided voters our way but in the end we sent six delegates on for Obama and two for Hillary.