I just got back from Longview, Washington, where I was helping out with the Dean campaign. For those of you not familiar with Pac NW geography, Longview is 55 miles down the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. It's a mill and lumber town , so there was a lot of union presence.
The long and short of it was - Kerry seemed to lead Dean by a ratio of about 3:2. All in all, that is a good showing for Dean given that this was not really a Dean stronghold.
Add to this the fact that Dean supporters were the only ones there with any kind of organized presence. Well, that isn't strictly true. Kerry's people were there as the precinct coordinators and general pains-in-the-asses who did their best to make us feel like we were Pat Buchanan supporters.
One anecdote, the Dean supporters came into the hall (an AWPPW union hall) and set up about fifty tables. Of these, they set up two tables for Dean information (with the assent of the PCO). Then, the other PCO (a really rabid Kerry person) comes over and tells us we can't have either table. I mean, I understand in that needs are needs, and that the needs of precinct participants should take priority. But it just seemed, well, shady.
Then they said we could set up our stuff on a podium, sans table. Yeah, right.
So at that moment one AWESOME Dean supporter mentioned that she had a camping table in her car. So then we had a station on the podium in the front of the hall!
Pretty cool.
The main problem is that the media has in many ways decided this campaign. Many folks I spoke with already felt that Kerry is going to win, and that voting for anyone else would be a waste.
I was able to convince a few of them on the electability issue, but I was really disappointed in how people decide to vote. I had a video (on my PC showing just how the "Dean scream" really sounded with Diane Sawyer's apology for the hoopla) It helped with a few voters.
All in all, it was a good experience, except I now really dislike caucuses. The one in Longview was a lot like the one in Dubuque IA on C-SPAN.
I kept thinking, "so this is how we choose our President?"
We have a long way to go before this country is really a democracy, folks.