I've only diaried once before, railing against Dave Reichert a couple years ago, but I had to share my experience at today's Democratic caucuses in the 48th Legislative District of the great State of Washington.
I saw overwhelming turnout and a solid win for Obama in this Legislative District. More below the fold.
When I volunteered to be a Precinct Captain for the Obama campaign, they told me to get to Ardmore Elementary School at about Noon for the caucus, which had an official "start" time of 1pm but with the caveat that individual precincts couldn't convene their caucuses until 1:30. Twenty precincts were scheduled to caucus in the school gym, which was roughly 1,200 square feet. They'd never had more than 500 people turn out for a caucus before.
When I got there at 12:10pm, there were already about two hundred people there. Lines were forming behind the single manila envelope and stack of sign-in sheets for each precinct. My precinct, 48-2466, had a precinct committee officer present (thank God!), who directed me to sign in and indicated my presidential preference. I saw that he had already signed in -- for Obama -- and immediately felt like this was going to be a good day.
I put up several Obama signs, including one that my wife and I made by hand this morning.
Within 30 minutes, by 12:40pm, there were over seven hundred people in the gym, which had a capacity of 586. The line went out the door, around the building and into the parking lot. People could no longer park in the school lot, but lined up their cars down the road as far as the eye could see. There were no more chairs available in the gym, and yet, more and more people crowded in. I handed out Obama buttons to everyone who wanted one, until (pretty quickly) I had none left.
At the scheduled start time of 1:30, there were about 1,200 in the gym, and still more waiting in the line outside. You could hardly move in the gym, it was so crowded. I don't know how everybody fit in there, but somehow, they got everyone signed in by 1:50, and the show was on.
Our PCO, Keith, convened the caucus promptly, and we took our first tally -- 42 votes for Obama, 22 for Clinton, and 2 Uncommitted. The conversion chart specified that, based on the ratio of votes for each candidate to the overall number of voters present, Obama got 5 delegates to Clinton's 3.
Things were going swimmingly, and then the area caucus chair stood up and began to speechify for twenty minutes regarding the caucus rules, and various announcements related to the local party that few of us really cared about at that moment. The lowlight was when he called for a moment of silence to honor the fallen in Iraq, and my cell phone rang (my wife's cousin, calling from Snohomish County to tell me how it was going up there). I knew someday I'd be that asshole who's phone rang during a prayerful moment; sheesh...
Anyway, the precinct chair called for volunteers to speak for one minute or less in support of the respective candidates. I let someone else do the talking on behalf of Obama, but it was clear that the energy in that room was moving strongly in favor of him.
When the two Uncommiteds were given an opportunity to ask questions, they asked about electability, and I was a bit astonished to hear the Clinton supporters claiming that Hillary was so much more electable because she had so much more experience in Washington and was a "fighter" and "tough enough" to stand up to the Republicans. But it isn't the Republicans who are going to decide this election; it's the independents, those folks in the middle who don't just go out and vote the party line every election year, on either side. And Obama clearly is reaching those independents, in state after state where he actually campaigns. The Uncommitteds changed their votes to Obama.
With each precinct having approximately 60 voters present, I estimate there were 1,750 people stuffed into that elementary school gym today. Democracy is messy sometimes, I figure. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Update: I forgot to mention, I checked in with several other precincts in the gym before I left, and Obama was winning each precinct by an average of 3 to 2 in delegates.