Caucus? Don't you take guaifenesin for that?
So, as many of you have heard, we have a rather odd primary system in Texas. It's called the Texas two-step. First you vote in the primary. You can vote early, or you can vote on the day of the primary. Your primary vote counts for 2/3 of the delegates.
Then if you are die-hard, a bit nutty, or curious you return to your polling place in the evening to experience the caucus. And, brother is it an experience.
I arrived with my 4 year-old at the library and saw lots of good-natured pandemonium. The parking lot was jammed with cars going every which-way; Hillary supporters were waving signs and yelling, Obama supporters were also waving signs and yelling; and the rest of us were just trying to figure out what in the world we were doing.
We finally got in the line to sign in. Technically, this is all you must do in order to cast a vote for the caucus delegates; 1/3 of the total. But if you're the aforementioned die-hard, nut, or curiosity seeker, you can stay for the actual caucus.
Now we get down to it. What exactly is a caucus?, I wondered. Well, basically you sit with your neighbors and find out who everybody voted for and then divide up the delegates in your precinct accordingly.
Since our precinct was assigned the children's section of the library, I decided to stick around. If they had caucuses in California, where I grew up, I'd never heard about them, so I admit I stayed out of curiosity. And there were computers in the children's library, so my son was entertained.
The first thing I noticed is that my neighbors are a lot of fun. There was a giant man with an Obama sign trading friendly insults with a Hillary supporter. Then, as though his tourette's syndrome kicked in, the giant would abruptly shout "OBAMA, OBAMA, OBAMA!!!", in ear-splitting decibels, then go back to the friendly insults. There was another man who had an autographed by Bill Clinton "Hillary" sign and video of Bill. (Not that kind of video. Just a campaign stop.) The other precincts weren't nearly so entertaining.
Also there was our chairwoman, who bristled with lists, rule books and other papers. Once everyone had voted, she opened the caucus and then explained that we needed to be checked off her list. See, they have to be sure that you really voted and aren't just a gate-crasher for some Libertarian or something. So we lined up again, to sign in again (and we wonder why the government is so gridlocked...), and then sat down to wait again.
By this time my husband arrived and was frankly amused by the whole affair. Like me, he's never been to a caucus, so he pulled up a chair and settled in for the show. Our son was still happily playing Pinky Dinky Doo on the computer, so all was good.
Once our chairwoman got everybody crossed off, the real work began, which was to select the delegates. It was then we learned that the delegates came from the group in the room. So if you want to be a delegate you have to persevere at the caucus until basically no one else is left. Which is about what happened, but not without controversy.
According to the rules, you take the number of people signed in (from the second sign-in, not the first sign-in...) and divide by the number of delegates assigned to your precinct. This gives you your quorum number. Well, it turned out the Obama folks were one short of a quorum. This meant that all the delegates from our precinct had to be Hillary delegates.
Well, this did not make the giant happy. For the rest of the evening, he poured over the rule book, looking for a loophole and making occasional giant-type whumpfh! noises from over the bookcase.
The rest of us slogged on. It was time for people to nominate delegates. Most people nominated themselves, but in a nanosecond of a lull, my husband pipes up in his best Bill Clinton voice (he imitates Billy very well...) and nominates me to go. 'Why not?', I figured, so here I am, to my surprise, a Hillary Clinton delegate to the district convention at the end of March.
Then our chairwoman dismissed everyone except the delegates, whereupon we read through 11 pages of resolutions. I can now surmise that most squirrelly stuff coming out of Washington happens because people are forced to read through legal "whereas"es at 11:00 p.m. without benefit of a sherry or a whiskey to brace them up.
Bleary-eyed, we moved to dismiss our caucus and went home.
I must admit to being one of those folks that thought this was crazy. Well, I still think it's crazy, but I will say it was nice to see neighbors come together as a community and discuss our nation without resorting to the name-calling we typically see on television news shows.
See you in Austin!
