A-Caucus We will Go

Just got back from the Iowa Caucus.  Whoa, what a madhouse!

This time, our precinct (the Fightin' DUBUQUE 19TH!!) met in the hospitality room on the third floor of the Carnegie-Stout Public Library.  219 people showed up and tried to fit in a room meant for 50.  Despite the -2 degree windchill outside, the place was like a freakin' oven.  I'm sure all sorts of fire codes were broken, but oh, well.

Bob and I showed up early, about 6 pm.  We lined up at the registration area, a long table with names divided into alphabetic subdivisions (A-G, H-L, etc), signed our names and also indicated which candidate we intended to caucus for.  This part isn't officially official--it's just a way for them to get a beginning headcount so that the chairman can figure out which candidates are going to be viable.

There's some mathmatical formula that I don't know that indicates viability.  A candidate has to have 15% in order to obtain one of our precinct's seven delegates.  With 219 people, this meant that a candidate needed to have at least 33 people in order to be viable--that is, in order to obtain a delegate to the Dubuque County Convention.

The room was already packed when we got there.  We ended up sitting next to an elderly couple who were from Illinois and had come to observe the caucus.  I spent a good 15 minutes explaining how the process worked to them and telling them about the last caucus, four years ago.  I also told them to watch the guy from Kuchinich's camp, because he would argue about almost anything and it was hilarious once he got started.

After sitting around for an hour (the law says the Caucus has to admit people until 7 pm), the Caucus finally started.  First, there was some Democrat Party business to take care of, an envelope was passed around to raise money for the State Democrat Party to pay for the caucus, and then each candidate had a representative give a small speech about why the undecided people should vote for them.  Then the primary totals were given out to see which candidates were viable as yet.  Obama was by far and away the most popular, and Hillary had enough for at least one delegate, but everyone else was not viable (ie: did not have 33 people). 

People split up into their candidate groups at this time and started arguing about who was going where.  This all took about 30 minutes.  Bob and I were caucusing for Bill Richardson, but he only had 8 people, so we held out for as long as we could, then the group split to give John Edwards the votes he needed to get a delegate.  We were technically supposed to go to Obama, but we wanted to vote for Edwards since our guy was out of the running and Obama really didn't need any more people, while Edwards did.  There was a lot of cheering from the Edwards camp when we showed up.  Yes, our votes actually made the difference!  Democracy at work!

After the final count of delegates from our precinct (Obama 3, Hillary 2, Edwards 1, Biden 1), we snuck out while the gettin' was good, as in before the traffic around the library got snarled up.

From the news coverage, it looks like Iowans came out in record numbers to caucus.  Right now, it looks like Obama 38%, Edwards 30%, Hillary 29% and Richardson 2%.  Not sure what the Republicans are doing, but it seems that Huckabee is well ahead of Romney, which is no surprise considering the number of Catholics in this state.  (Actually, the only Republican I can stand is John McCain--not because I agree with him, but because he is a veteran and has more experience than the other yahoos from that party, but since I'm a Democrat, it hardly matters).

Now the craziness is over.  All the candidates can move on and the press people can go home, and we can go back to the usual peace and quiet of semi-rural life.

(X-posted from my LiveJournal)