Our caucus drew at least three times as many as expected (69). Dean won 2 delegates (30 votes) to 1 delegate for Kerry and 1 for Kucinich. I'm one of the Dean delegates who will go to the district convention in May.
Bad news for Bush: the turnout was over TEN times more than the last precinct caucus in 1992 (which drew 6 people). People clearly want W gone with an intensity unseen in a LONG time.
The room that was originally allocated for four precincts quickly was shown to be lacking, so we were allowed to use the auditorium (set up w/ chairs for a wedding) to hold our caucus.
None of us knew what we were doing. The chairman did a remarkably good job feeling his way through the process though there were definitely moments of chaos.
The Kucinich contingent was composed of a hard core of DK followers, some Clarkies and a few undecideds who wanted to "keep the conversation going in a more leftward direction."
The first count was something like
Dean 26
Kerry 23
Kucinich 7
Clark 5
Sharpton 1
Edwards 1
Undecided 6
There was general confusion about the rules and we divided up into different parts of the room, with most of the action going on among the non-viable candidacies trying to for a coalition. Before the last count, there were a few people who got up and spoke in favor of their candidates.
When the Kerry contingent, in defending Kerry from charges of being a rightist, started to talk about Dean as a pro-gun, pro-death penalty candidate, my hand shot up. My wife (now a Dean alternate) mouthed "be nice" to me to keep me from going for the jugular.
I got the last word and I said that Dean would be the best president since Harry S Truman (I favor him over JFK). I said that it was Dean who stood up in the middle of the rush to war in March and said "what I want to know is why so many Democrats are supporting the war in Iraq."
I finished by saying that Howard Dean had raised more money from more regular people than anyone can remember and that scares the hell out of people entrenched in power in Washington. The reason that the corporate media says Dean is unelectable is because he is the best Democratic candidate out there.
I have no idea if my speech swayed anyone, but people liked what I said and made me a delegate in the district convention coming up. Dean benefited from Kerry losing a delegate, but I talked to the Kerry delegate afterward and we were all about ABB and no snarkiness.
At this point, of course I'd love to see Dean turn it around, but I think the most important thing is to keep the level of energy and engagement that Dean created going through to the general election.
So far this has been the most fun and memorable election year I can remember-- I can't wait to kick Bush out the door HARD.
GOP readers: you guys are going down. You've got the guns but we've got the numbers. We are definitely going to "bring it on"-- HAHAHAHA suckers!