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colorado caucuses
Feb. 6th, 2008 02:29 pmwe went to our caucus last night. the good part is that there were 100 times more democrats attending than ever before in our district. the bad part was that they were totally unprepared for those numbers. we knew it was going to be bad when we drove up 15 minutes before the start of the caucus and had to park FOUR BLOCKS away. it was a long cold walk and none of us were prepared for it. we'd figured to just duck in the front door from the parking lot. the caucus was held in a local elementary school and the republicans had a separate classroom for each district (about 15 districts). the democrats were all in the gym. and it was chaos. i'm told that in past years maybe 30 to 50 democrats would show up for all 15 districts and there was plenty of room and each person entering was greeted gladly by the others. last night there must have been 500 people in the gym. a circle of about ten chairs was set for each district - and there were no signs to tell which circle was which. by the time we arrived chairs were being stolen left and right and the different circles looked like some giant game of ameoba as they moved, broke, and encompassed smaller groups.
my district had 27 people who sat, leaned, and stood around the chairs we managed to retain, waiting for someone to tell us what we were doing. the party didn't have enough district leaders to run the caucus so quite a few people were handed written instructions and roped into the job. the noise level was deafening. impossible to hear our leader as he turned dizzily in a circle repeating himself to all and sundry. we polled 3 of our 5 delegates for mark udall and 2 uncommitted. we polled 3 for clinton and 2 for obama. we attempted to listen while our guy attempted to repetitively read out loud four slightly ridiculous resolutions that the party wanted our opinion on. most of us had no opinion, and couldn't hear anyway, and there were no written copies to read. but we bulled our way through the printed agenda and walked the four blocks back to our cold car through snowy streets and icy driveways.
it was a positive experience. but i REALLY hope that the democrats get their house in order a bit better next time. and you can all be proud of me that i did NOT volunteer to organize everything. even though they asked. so there.
my district had 27 people who sat, leaned, and stood around the chairs we managed to retain, waiting for someone to tell us what we were doing. the party didn't have enough district leaders to run the caucus so quite a few people were handed written instructions and roped into the job. the noise level was deafening. impossible to hear our leader as he turned dizzily in a circle repeating himself to all and sundry. we polled 3 of our 5 delegates for mark udall and 2 uncommitted. we polled 3 for clinton and 2 for obama. we attempted to listen while our guy attempted to repetitively read out loud four slightly ridiculous resolutions that the party wanted our opinion on. most of us had no opinion, and couldn't hear anyway, and there were no written copies to read. but we bulled our way through the printed agenda and walked the four blocks back to our cold car through snowy streets and icy driveways.
it was a positive experience. but i REALLY hope that the democrats get their house in order a bit better next time. and you can all be proud of me that i did NOT volunteer to organize everything. even though they asked. so there.
