Ready, Set - Caucus!

I do not consider myself a Democrat, nor am I a Republican...I suppose that makes me an Independent. But since Independents don't have their own horse in this Presidential race I had to choose if I actually wanted to have a say who will be our next President. Since George Junior has pretty much soured the majority of Americans, and for that matter the world, on Republicans, I chose Democrat this time around. But this post is not meant to serve as a soap box for who I think should be president. The way I see it, we are all gonna be better off no matter who takes over after GWB.

So anyways, about the caucus... I have never been to one before and like a lot of people I just really, really wanted to do it this time around. First off - it was chaos. When I walked into the room I was met by a very nice older gentleman who told me to go to the table on my right and look for the precinct number I am in (according to the geographical area I live in). Problem was, the maps made no sense at all! Instead of just taking a large map of our local area and outlining the various precincts they decided instead to chop up the map into several unrecognizable sections and then have each person try to figure out where their house might be on these sections. It took me a solid 15 minutes of looking at all these little map-chunks until I finally figured out I was in "Precinct 641".

So with this new found knowledge I set about finding the table where my fellow "641's" sat. I walked past precinct "623's" table and it's 90+ members and table "617" and it's boisterous group of 50 or so...and then I saw table "641" and sitting there at my precinct's table were exactly two people: A 65 year-old grandmother and a 18 year-old, cute as a button, high school girl.

I walked up to the table and with my arms stretched out wide I shouted "My people!" which startled both of them and they almost in perceptively scooted their chairs away from me about an 1/8 of an inch. Not wanting to waste any time I immediately pointed at the teenager and said "Obama!". To which she nodded and meekly agreed that that's who she's voting for. I said "Me too!" I then turned to grandma and said "Okay, that's two Obamas, what say you?" Grandma shuffled in here chair a bit and then said "Well, I want to vote for Edwards..." I then said "You realize he is not actually running anymore right? and she shot me a look that just screamed "Don't use that tone with me young man" but she said "I know, but I just really like him and I'm not sure I can vote for Clinton or Obama". So I said enthusiastically "Alright, so this is why we are caucusing! This is where we (pointing at the prom queen) get to persuade you to vote for our guy!

I went first: "Okay, to me it's all about character, Obama just seems like the one candidate that is not full of...(looking at grandma)...of, you know, he answers questions directly (whew!). I mean, (struggling now, I'd never make it as a professional debater) he doesn't answer difficult questions with lines like "Well let me answer that question this way"...man I hate that!"

Okay, so there are important issues I could have brought up (Iraq, to name just one) that I agree with Obama on, but that was the best I could do at the time - so I turned to the cheerleader and said "Okay, you want to make a argument for Obama?" and she says "Sure" - and she launches into this well thought out and reasoned lecture that made me feel like a 4th place finisher in a retard race. When she finished, grandma smiled at her and said "Okay - Obama's got my vote".

We then had to elect a chairman, a secretary and a Tally counter. With my superior mental capacity I elected my self "Tally Counter" (there were exactly 3 votes, all for Obama...my work was done) I then took it upon myself to nominate the teenage valedictorian as Chairman and grandma as secretary. We filled out the appropriate paper work, announced to the crowd that our single delegate (the number of delegates is based on precinct size - we were by far and away the smallest) was awarded to Obama.

After shaking my fellow precinct members hands and bidding them farewell I walked out of the caucus hall and to my car...feeling distinctly American. It was pretty cool.