Here's what happened to John, from Precinct 63.
About 10 minutes before the caucuses begin, he walks through the doors of the East High School library. He's wearing the same Carhart jacket, the same backwards-turned Red Sox ballcap.
I'm thrilled.
"You're here," I exclaim.
"I keep my promises, at least 98 percent of the time," he says.
He stood in line and, when he got to the sign-in desk, filled out a new voter registration form. I then had to leave for a three-minute, phone-in report to Maryland Public Television. When I get back from the payphone in another part of the high school, I start interviewing two guys who drove down from Chicago that day to volunteer for Gephardt. (More on them in a second.)
The library is split-level, and along with other non-Iowan observers, including campaign caucus-watchers for Dean and Kucinich, and an Italian reporter, I'm standing on the library's second level - literally overlooking the 60 or so caucus-goers.
But John is nowhere.
I check every head. Nope.
I go downstairs to see if he is underneath the overlook, tucked somewhere out of view between the stacks. Nope.
I leave the library and walk briskly through the halls, hoping to find him on the way back from the bathroom, a smoke break, whatever. Nope.
John never returned. I don't know if he thought that showing up and filling the form was sufficient to participate, and if so, I'm crestfallen to think I failed to explain to him what he needed to do. During our conversation on Buchanan Street two days earlier, we didn't really talk about what happens on caucus night. I never considered he might show up and not stay.
Maybe he got nervous, or was intimidated. Maybe he felt out of place. Perhaps he realized he had to get home for some personal or familial emergency. I just don't know. And never will, I suppose.
I wish the episode had a happier ending, folks, but it doesn't.
I suppose the upside is found in those two guys from Chicago, Mike and Joe. Both are in their 30s, white, college-educated, middle-class guys. Mike owns his own marketing research concern; Joe is a software project manager. They are the sort of guys with short haircuts and a 15-handicap that you see drinking domestic beer at sports bars. In short, they are not profile Democrats.
But these two guys drove 5½ hours from Chicago on caucus day, showed up at the Gephardt office, where they were assigned to pick up an older, infirm man and drive him to East High. Precinct 63 took an unusually (indeed, painfully) long time to organize and reach a decision, so they were there for more than two hours just to deliver one senior citizen. And all Joe and Mike had to look forward to was a night's sleep and another 5½ hours in the car, all of that gas and time spent driving came at their own expense.
Mike didn't care about the costs. "When things are this bad," he said, "I figured I had to do something."
Pay attention, Mr. President, your support is softening.
Or better yet: Continue doing as you do so well, and don't pay attention at all, because Mike and Joe are paying attention. If the Democrats can figure out how to get John to follow through as well, and the nation wakes up like Iowans (and non-Iowans) did on Monday night, there will soon be ample time for Bush43 to ruminate on the consequences of not paying attention while clearing brush down on the ranch.