Saturday, February 09, 2008

Caucus excitement

Today the H-man and I were a part of history, along with many other Seattlites. We participated in the democratic caucus!

Since primary votes do not determine democratic delegates in the state of WA (despite the fact that we can vote in the primary), and we feel pretty strongly about our candidate of choice, we decided to participate. It was our first caucus, and it was pretty interesting. I'd say it was exciting, but mostly it was just sort of hot and noisy, with tons of people packed into the gym of a local high school.

It was really cool to see so many people come out to participate, and to be a part of it ourselves. Also pretty cool was that in our precinct, things were incredibly straightforward. The vast majority supported Obama, with the initial delegate counts ending up 5 for Obama and 1 for Clinton. But after speeches were made and uncommitted participants chose a candidate, our precinct ended up going 6-0 in favor of Obama. That was pretty damn exciting.

Also pretty rad was the fact that on the other side of the gym, a precinct made up almost entirely of elderly citizens from a retirement home also went for Obama. How cool is that? More interesting than seeing the candidate that I favor gaining so much support was being present to actually see how people are thinking. I hear the daily news and general punditry, and from that I would assume that my elderly (democrat) neighbors would strongly favor Clinton. It was nifty to see what's going on directly, beyond the national statistics.

So anyway, that's that. Now to wait anxiously for the overall results from around the state.