What I saw at my causus

The Call is a 24-page, 8 1/2-by-11 booklet with information about the caucus (location, what to bring), an agenda for the day, and a suggested party platform. It also got me a ride to the caucus with a guy who saw me carrying it.

In the high school gym, they had the risers out. Risers are indoor bleachers. It's like a giant wooden staircase that runs the length of the gym and on which throngs of teenagers are supposed to sit after they've been herded into the gym. They (the bleachers, that is) are intended, I suppose, for younger bodies which don't have the option of leaving when they want to. We older folks crowded and jostled and settled in for the long day. I shrugged and moved to the left so the guy behind me would not have his knee in the middle of my back.

For most people, this was the first time they'd done this whole district caucus thing. People volunteered how excited they were and asked everyone around them lots of questions about how things were supposed to go from here. They seemed to especially ask me a lot of questions because I let it slip that I had been to a county caucus in 2004 in the Tri-Cities. I had been, in fact, the Sergeant at Arms for that caucus. I wasn't able to tell them much of anything that wasn't in The Call, but everyone was antsy. Damn risers.

People talked about whether this was democratic (small d), since not everyone could come out for a meeting like this. Some people had obligations, jobs, or just couldn't move around well enough to hang out in a gym all day. I don't know what I think about all that. It's true not everyone can participate in a gathering such as this, but most people choose not to participate. Even when we make it super-easy to vote, a large number of people don't do that, either.

In contrast, everyone who was here chose to be here because they wanted to participate. They thought about issues. They thought about problems. They thought about solutions.

Back in February, when the Dems got together to caucus in Washington State, we threw our support behind Barack Obama. Obama won 68% of the caucus delegates. If you look at the Washington State counties, click for more on the Republican side, you see that Huckabee won some counties, Romney won some counties, McCain won some counties. On the Democratic side, Obama took a majority in every county, including Garfield County with 100%. (Wikipedia says: "As of the census of 2000, there were 2,397 people, 987 households, and 670 families residing in the county." And a majority of the Dems there support Obama, resulting in their one delegate being pledged to Obama.)

To the contrary. When I got into the cafeteria/gym area of the high school where we caucused, I saw Clinton posters everywhere. Big, hand-lettered, somebody-took-the-time-to-make-me posters on the walls, on the windows, on the doors. Made weak by time and fate, the Clinton folks were strong in will not to yield.

After sitting on the risers for a while, I'd had enough of Remember High School and got up to wander a bit. Dozens of people milled around outside the gym, looking at the Hillary Clinton table or the Barack Obama table. A guy was collecting signatures to save some old trees by the school. The Washington State Death With Dignity group was circulating petitions. But I mostly stayed around the door to the gym so I could hear the credentials report. Or try to.

The initial credentials report was a call for alternates to be seated as delegates in precincts where they were short on delegates. This took the form of a woman whose voice was tired and barely audible even with the microphone. I think it would have been a small kindness (to her and to us) if someone else had read her list. I'm sure caucus rules would have allowed it — or could be modified by unanimous consent.

I was a little concerned at this point because my precinct was at risk. There were only three delegates and one alternate for the four delegate positions allocated to Obama as of the week before the caucus. The Obama people were doing a tremendous job of organizing and following up with the delegates so we wouldn't risk losing representation to the next level. "Representation to the next level" involves a complicated process only understandable by going to Stonehenge and twirling around until you get dizzy and fall down, but the basic premise is that if your delegates don't show up, you don't get as much support at the national convention as you thought you would.

One of the concerns about Obama is that he might just be a trend. Flavor of the week. We need to pick a campaigner who can stand against John McCain and the Republican attack machine. We can't choose a candidate with support a mile wide and an inch deep.

But all four of our Obama delegate slots were filled. And all the Obama slots from the caucus site I attended in February were filled. And when the final delegate count was read — quietly — we still had the solid support evidenced in the first round of caucuses.

At the beginning of the caucus, the temporary chair of the caucus made a few announcements and — with thunderous applause echoing around the gym — introduced Jim McDermott for a few words. Next came a couple of other speakers and then A POINT OF ORDER.

The temporary chair dutifully stopped and heard the point of order, which was that there was supposed to be a report from the credentials committee.

The temporary chair explained that the credentials report was just not ready. They couldn't do anything else on the agenda until they'd had that report. He didn't say it — I didn't think he had to — but they were filling time, waiting for the sign-ins to be tallied. After some more speeches and sitting around, that report was ready.

After the initial credentials report, we started in on the 46th Legislative District 2008 Proposed Democratic Platform. This is a list of headers like "Our Values," "Agriculture," and "Civil & Human Rights" with lists of principles such as "Protecting the environment for ourselves and future generations" and "Enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act" and "Local farmer's markets."

The plan was simple. The chair would lead us through the list and people would have the option of flagging certain items for further discussion. After going through the whole list, the caucus would accept unflagged points by a voice vote. We would then discuss the contentious points.

The chair explained that the point of this exercise was to ratify the uncontroversial parts, so just step up to the microphone, say the number of the point you wanted to discuss later, and step down the counter or no soup for you.

We're Democrats, though! There are issues to be discussed! They are important issues, and we'll take just a moment to discuss them in detail! And shouldn't we say an "immediate" rollback of the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy?! Look at the size of the deficit — doesn't that count as important?!

The chair managed to herd the cats for the next hour until we got the next credentials report. They still needed some alternates to report.

Then we were back to platform topics such as National Security, where a lot of people wanted to add items to the platform. Again, they wanted to add them with details — complete wording and discussion of why they were so important. The chair took down a two- or three-word summary and moved on.

Based on the discussion that we weren't supposed to be having, most items of concern were what you'd expect from our Seattle brand of Democrat. Issues of environmentalism, civil rights and inclusion, access to health care, avoidance of war. Some exceptions, though. For instance, the plank on funding preschool and kindergarten and opposition to charter schools and vouchers. Even here in a predominantly liberal area there are going to be some differences of opinion. Somebody's probably for vouchers.

A more cynical person might say that this platform won't be read again until it's time to caucus again in four years. I'm not capable of that kind of cynicism. The platform articulates what we expect of our leaders and what their priorities should be when they work for us.

I took the opportunity to wander the caucus site. I rarely have occasion to be in a high school since I managed to escape a long time ago. Things look pretty much like they did "when I was growing up" the aforementioned long time ago. Cafeteria with hard plastic chairs. Hallway with lockers. I did notice there were some healthy-snack and fruit-juice vending machines. When I was a kid, healthy snacks were called meals.

Back in hallway, I overheard an earnest young woman explain that Al Gore wants to bring Wall Street and the City of London into the Democratic Party. My antennae twitched. Al Gore is the current patron saint of the Democratic Party. He is supplanting Jimmy Carter as the avatar of the good and the right. Criticisms from the Republicans parody him — unfairly and for cheap laughs — as a tree hugger who hates modernity but still flies in jets. A criticism of him at a Democratic function — and she was being critical, make no mistake — is unusual.

But there are plenty of liberals who think Al Gore is too moderate in his defense of the planet. As a sellout to corporatism, he is only marginally less culpable than the Republicans for the degradation of Gaea.

This flier — helpfully printed with English on one side and Spanish on the other — explained that the global financial meltdown had finally happened. It's so obvious that only "mental cases" couldn't see it. Only his leadership could save us. Good thing he's around. Still.

It's kind of reassuring, in a way. Decade after decade after decade, this guy keeps coming back with the same millennialism. He gets followers — including the attractive young woman passing out these fliers — and they keep at it.

It's not a good idea to think of LaRoucheys as left or right. If you go far enough left or right, well, at some point, Ouroboros eateth its own tail. Down there, where the snake's jaw is unhinged and the reptile brain is starting to register, "When am I going to finish this meal? I should have grabbed the hamster," down there you find Ayn Rand purists, Illuminati theorists, Hollow Earthers, people who believe lizard men live under Los Angeles, and LaRoucheys.