Delegate

A little over two weeks ago I went to the Washington State caucuses for the first time. It was a pretty interesting experience. The turnout was pretty immense. In my precinct alone, we had around 45 people; enough that 2/3 of us had to stand because there was no more room at the table. Most of the precincts were like this, and we all barely fit into the tiny school cafeteria.

On the wall behind our table was a student project that illustrated to me just how much we need, at the very least, more funding in our schools. The project was similar to those $1 donations you give at the supermarket where you get to put your name on a slip of paper to show off that you donated. In this case, the project was that if a student read a book from somewhere else in the world for an hour, they’d get to put their name on a slip of paper with a picture of a briefcase on it and pin it up to this display, in the centre of which was a map of the world. The problem? The map on the wall still had the Soviet Union on it. I pointed this out to most of the people in my precinct and got a few nervous laughs.

I recognised some of the people in my precinct. There was a family of three who I know I’ve seen around, and I think even had some brief conversations with in the checkout line before. Nice people. The dad and daughter voted for Clinton, while the mom was an Obama fan. There was a middle-aged guy I played chess with once at the giant chess set in Crossroads Mall years ago (he won; damned good player) and have seen him there a few times since. There was a cute girl who was our only undecided neighbour. By and large, though, it was old men and women; the kind of demographic which people say you usually see at caucuses.

I’ve heard people complain that Obama is overrepresented because of his caucus victories, or that voters might feel intimidated to show their true preference in front of their neighbours, but I didn’t really see that as valid. Our precinct, like the rest of the state, voted 70% for Obama. But the demographics involved are the kinds that at the time favoured Clinton. (Since then, of course, Obama has been steadily chipping away at Clinton’s base.) With the exception of our undecided voter (who did decide on Obama in the second round of voting), everyone appeared to have their minds made up beforehand. When we voted, we did so simultaneously, and I didn’t see anyone change their support from Clinton to Obama. I think the only real advantage any given candidate can have in a caucus is in terms of organisational ability. It’s a test of a campaign’s ability to get voters to show up to the caucus, and Obama does definitely have an organisational advantage, no doubt refined by his years working as a community organiser in Chicago.

The caucus was a weird process. I think it’s a fabulous way to select a candidate, but you can tell that the people who organised it weren’t that good about organising things, and the methods involved didn’t seem as streamlined and efficient as they could have been. Indeed, the videos I saw of the Iowa caucuses seemed to me to be quite a bit more polished and professional than the Washington version. The people asked to give speeches on behalf of their candidate could have also been better-chosen, in my opinion. None of them were even remotely good orators and didn’t seem concerned with presenting themselves well, and it looked as though they had written their own speeches, whereas I had been led to believe that the opening statements were supposed to be provided by the campaigns themselves.

But it would seem that we only have ourselves to blame for the shortcomings in the process we have. For decades, the caucuses have been dominated by those with nothing better to do. Elderly and retired folk, we have been told, always form the bulk of caucusgoers. Not that there’s anything wrong with the elderly and retired, but without a proper representation by scientists, engineers, academics, educators, labourers and the like it suddenly is no longer surprising that the Democratic Party has ended up in the past with pushover nominees like Walter Mondale. In the past we have considered ourselves too busy to be the government we want, so we’ve wound up with the government we deserved. What’s changed in this election cycle is that the American public — especially people in my generation, the so-called “millenials” — have been more engaged in the political process than at any other point at least in my lifetime. Turnout for the democratic primaries and caucuses throughout the country have been consistently shattering records, doubling and sometimes even tripling the previous records.

I have no doubt that a large reason for this is that people have seen, in the form of the Bush administration, just how bad it can get when we don’t take politics in this country seriously. For many in the younger portion of my generation — those who were still in school in 2001 — this is the first presidential election they’ve been able to vote in. The disastrous 8 years of George W. Bush happened largely while they still had no say in how things are run, while those like myself who are just a few years older remember further back. My recollection of Reagan can be best summed up by the end of Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” video, where he’s choosing between the “Nuke” and “Nurse” buttons next to his bed. George H. W. Bush I mostly remember as a warmonger, with not just the Iraq war but his many military incursions into South and Central America as well. But the Clinton era was while I was a teenager, so I remember it most of all. While it was a period of relative peace and prosperity, I remember a lot of not-so-good things about it. I remember him intervening in the Bosnian genocide, but not lifting a finger to stop the one that took place in Rwanda. I remember the economic growth that followed Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the World-Wide Web and a balanced budget, but I also remember the endless scandals, the radically increased partisanship and partisan fighting. I remember going through a public education system which was steadily getting worse, where schools became increasingly more concerned with regulating dress and behaviour than with making sure students were learning and being prepared for the world that awaited them. Democrats I’ve noticed tend to look at the Clinton years through the same kind of rose-coloured glasses that Republicans wear when looking at the Reagan years, as if the Clinton administration was some sort of Democratic golden era where everything was good and nothing bad ever happened. Of course, when compared to George W. Bush, this is hardly surprising.

People, it seems, have finally figured out that the solution is to participate, and participate I did. During the delegate selection process, I eagerly volunteered to be a delegate. We ended up with too many volunteers — eight volunteers for six delegate seats — so each person was allowed a brief statement, after which each person who voted for that candidate’s delegate voted on who they thought would be most deserving. A person could only vote for one person to be a delegate, despite the fact that there were six positions to fill, which thankfully didn’t result in everybody using up their votes before we finished casting votes for all the volunteers. (Another case of poor organisation and planning on behalf of the people running the caucus, as it would have made sense to have everyone do an instant-runoff vote in that situation; a fact which I pointed out but was ignored on.) Also, you could only vote for a person to be a delegate for the candidate you voted for, so Clinton voters couldn’t nominate Obama delegates and vice versa. My precinct only needed two Clinton delegates, for which two people volunteered; so there was no need to vote for who would be a Clinton delegate.

After a couple other people spoke and were voted for, I made my statement. Sizing up my audience, I decided on three points to make. First, I talked about how, after years of watching the U.S. Constitution be edited, disrespected and ignored — from the Supreme Court selecting the president in 2000 to that president’s suspension of habeas corpus six years later — it sure would be nice to have a president who not only knows and respects the Constitution, but who has taught it as a constitutional law professor. I mentioned that a friend of mine who is studying law at the University of Washington told me about how everyone feels sorry for the constitutional law students, because those courses are the most difficult, and how impressed they all are when told that Barack Obama has taught those classes.

I then spoke about the completeness with which he considers any given issue, using women’s issues as my example. I pointed out that while both Clinton and Obama both had a section on their websites for women’s issues, Obama’s was the only one that included Social Security among them. You see, it might not be obvious at first, but if you think about it, it makes perfect sense for Social Security to be considered a women’s issue. Statistically-speaking, women live on average 6 years longer than men, so we should expect that women would make up the majority of Social Security recipients. If we go to the Social Security Administration’s web site, we find that this is true: women represent 57% of all Social Security beneficiaries age 62 and older and 70% of all beneficiaries age 85 and older. Social Security becomes especially important for many women who are supported by their husbands, because when those husbands die it is usually after some manner of protracted illness which drains whatever savings the couple might have had.

Lastly, I spoke about the Iraq War, and how it showed a marked difference in judgement, which is a characteristic that is absolutely critical for anyone we choose to be the President of the United States. I’ve heard some people deride Obama’s speaking out against the war in 2002 — before the war even began — saying that it didn’t matter because he didn’t actually have to vote on it. But the thing that most people don’t realise is that when he began his (consistent) opposition to the war, he was running for the U.S. Senate in a very heated primary at a time when some 70% of the nation supported the idea of waging war against Iraq and Bush had an approval rating in the same neighbourhood, making his stance a very unpopular one that could have cost him the race. At the time, he made a series of predictions about what would happen if we did invade Iraq, all of which have since come true.

As you can imagine, I was quite pleased when — after I finished speaking — a large number of hands went up. In fact, I received the most votes out of anyone there by far. After a few more votes, the caucus was over. I walked away with a little card that I have to bring to the legislative district caucus in April, and I’m hoping to serve as a delegate all the way to the national convention.