MN Caucus
So this past Tuesday, I got to participate in a presidential primary/caucus that actually mattered for the first time in my life.
MN had moved up its caucus date to have a greater say in the primary process. Unfortunately for them, just about every other state had the same idea, meaning that big states like NY and CA got more attention than we did. However, we had a series of candidates visiting the cities in the days up to the election. Barack Obama held a rally at the Target Center (where the Timberwolves(basketball) play) on Sunday. Hillary Clinton was in town on Sunday at a local college. Mitt Romney and Ron Paul also made appearances. Huckabee may have dropped in, but McCain did not.
I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. I had initially planned to vote for Edwards, but he dropped out the week before. That left me scrambling for a candidate. I like both Hillary and Barack a great deal. I think they would both make terrific nominees and there isn’t much difference between them on policy. The only real difference I could find was on their healthcare proposals. While mandates may be problematic, what I”ve seen suggests that they are the best way to insure the most people for the least amount of cost.
I appreciate the movement that Obama has created and the real sense of possibility associated with it. However, the pragmatist in me feels that we will need more than rhetoric to clean up the complete cluster&*@# that Bush has created. I also do not believe the idea that Hillary will unite the Republican party and draw a much more negative campaign. If history is any guide, the general election campaign will be bruising and bloody and it doesn’t matter who the Democratic nominee is. Bill Clinton ran and governed as a centrist. He advanced some conservative ideas (i.e. welfare reform) and he was hounded with phony scandals for his entire presidency. Yes, he may have had an affair with an intern, but I fail to see how that rises to the level of a concern of the state.
At this point, I simply do not know how Obama will be able to handle the coming attacks. Perhaps he is gifted enough to be able to parry and dodge them better than anyone else. I haven’t seen that from anyone yet, so I have a hard time believing it.
But then I consider the movement that he has created. There are a huge number of people who have been energized by his campaign. Most of his contributors are small donors who are only able to give a small amount. That degree of investment from a broad base of support is impressive. In the end, I suppose, this is what tipped the balance for me.
Of course, I’ve gotten completely off track from where I was going to go with this post.
Doors opened at the caucus at 6:30. Voting on the presidential candidates was from 6:30-8pm. This was done by simple paper ballot placed in a box. I arrived at 6:40 and by the time I was about to cast a vote (maybe 5-10 minutes later), they had run out of paper ballots. They started using scraps of paper instead.
Having never been to a caucus before, I stuck around for the party business (which included choosing a candidate for US Senate). During that, I found out that our precinct was predicted to have a turnout of ~75, a 15% increase over four years ago. When they finally tallied the votes, there were 401. 307 voted for Obama, 89 for Clinton, Kucinich got a few, and some deluded person voted for Mike Huckabee.
If people are interested, I’ll give more details about the actual caucusing part of the evening in the comments.