Texas Circus - Field Visit report

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Yesterday, I did attend the Texas Circus. I had a pre-conceived notion that caucuses are stupid, unfair to people who do not have plenty of time on their hand, unfair to older people, can be stacked in your favor, are undemocratic and just plain boring.</p>

<p>Attending one of them has not changed my mind.</p>

<p>About 700 people voted in my precinct on Tuesday and about 300 in early voting. The circus was supposed to start at 7:30. We went around 7:15, and it turned out that the circus place was the patio of our sub-division club house. It was cold in Houston, no place to sit and a total of 124 people showed up.</p>

<p>We began around 8:15 with sign in lines. Those who wanted to just indicate their candidate preference could just sign (of course with proof of voting in Democrat primary earlier), write their address, phone number and candidate preference and then can go home. Bizarre – they already did it by voting. </p>

<p>Wife unit and I stayed. Then there was an election for Caucus Chair and Secretary. I nominated my self, but was defeated a unanimously. A sharply dressed criminal lawyer won the Caucus Chair and a semi attractive woman became the secretary.</p>

<p>Then there was vote counting. Hillary received 77 and Obama 47 votes. So she got to send 7 delegates to the local senate convention and Obama got 5. (It seems delegates from our precinct don’t count as much as other precincts).</p>

<p>By this time about 25 out of 124 had remained. The rest had already gone home. Then we had couple of resolution that we voted.</p>

<p>Next Clinton and Obama group separated to elect the delegates. I threw my name again. We needed 7, but 9 people wanted to be delegates. Clinton group had about 15 people. We voted, and I won the delegate election by 1 vote – from wife unit + other 10.</p>

<p>We came home around 9:45 – spent about two and a half hours in cold.</p>

<p>Come March 29, I will be a Clinton Delegate and will report on that circus.</p>

2

<p>Congrats simba on your willingness to remain upright throughout the entire Two-Step. Let’s hope that enough Clinton supporters had the same level of fortitude and devotion to make certain their votes are counted.</p>

3

<p>Another reason it should be the Democrat Party as there is little democratic about its workings.</p>

4

<p>Karl Rove said that the Texas democrats had given more weight in the delegate count to white areas and black areas of the state than to hispanic areas. There is nothing democratic about the Democratic party selection process in Texas. </p>

<p>I should add there is nothing democratic about letting superdelegates chose the Democratic Party nominee. In fact, it is elitist.</p>

5

<p>It was a circus but a fun circus. Living in Tarrant County, before last night, I literally only knew of two other Democrats. It was terrific to see some of my neighbors at the caucus. We had 4 precincts in a local elementary school and we overflowed the cafeteria, library, etc. I had no idea there were so many of us. The process couldn’t have been more ineffecient, but it was still a cool thing to do.</p>

6

<p>More shenanigans</p>

<p>[Tempers</a> Flare as Contests Heat Up](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/04/AR2008030403662_pf.html]Tempers”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/04/AR2008030403662_pf.html)</p>

7

<p>In my little suburban, highly Republican precinct, I was astonished to see over 60 people for the caucus. Usually we are lucky to scrape together 8-10 people. We voted at the elementary school across the street, and had to have the caucus in the hallways (the school did not allot us any rooms). Most people were excited that both candidates are good choices.</p>

<p>Several years ago I went through the entire process to the state convention - the highlights were hearing Ann Richards, observing the biker lobby trying to repeal the helmet laws, and the LaRouche representatives.</p>

8

<p>Not to worry, a lot of those folks at the Dem caucus will be voting for McCain in the general election.</p>

9

<p>I’m hearing about lots of Repulicans who went to vote for Hillary. Has the press reported on this at all?</p>

10

<p>hey bandit long time no see.</p>

11

<p>Simba, congrats on being a delegate. Can’t wait for your next report. Do us proud.</p>

12

<p>missy, Republicans may have voted for HRC due to Rush Limbaugh telling them that she will be easier to beat in Nov. </p>

<p>More Kool-Aid, anyone?</p>

13

<p>Right, 2cakes, those are the ones to which I was referring. I’d love for there to have been exit polls that identified how many of them there were.</p>

14

<p>firefly, maybe one reason that the school couldn’t allot you any rooms is that today was the almighty TAKS test in many grades. Teachers spent hours after school covering all wall decorations that could be considered “helpful” on the test, moving desks and drawing up precise seating charts to be signed and returned to the state.</p>

15

<p>“The Obama campaign is proclaiming they won the Texas caucus by double digits. Indeed, that seems to be the case. Nevertheless, they need to be careful not to proclaim this too loudly. How will it look if Clinton wins a majority of the more than 2.5 million Texans who voted in the primary, but Obama wins the caucus in which about 100,000 people participated? That might help Clinton because it is evidence that the caucuses are not a good gauge of voter preferences. Obama needs to talk up his pledged delegate lead, without reminding people of how it is heavily dependent upon the caucuses. The Clinton camp is going to start attacking these caucuses.”</p>

<p>[Ross</a> Douthat (March 05, 2008) - The People’s Choice? (Politics)](<a href=“http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/the_peoples_choice.php]Ross”>The People's Choice? - The Atlantic)</p>

16

<p>The primary vote was a virtual tie. Clinton’s “majority” of 2.5 million voters was a margin of less than 100,000 voters. In fact, one problem is that with those numbers, there is no “winner” - the popular delegates would be evenly split. </p>

<p>To win in November, the party’s candidate will have to be able to mobilize many voters to get out en masse and vote – and Obama clearly has shown he has ability to deliver. Clinton’s weakness in the caucuses stems from the fact that she lacks strong grassroots support and/or organization – its one thing to run a television ad smearing the opposing candidate, its another to marshal one’s own forces and get them out to the polls on election day.</p>

<p>I don’t know what the thinking is behind the 2-vote caucus system in Texas, but the bottom line is that the decision is being made by voters who are committed enough to take the extra time involved. With people like Rush Limbaugh urging right-wingers to vote for Hillary on the logic that she will be easier to beat, maybe it makes sense for an extra layer of security to be added to prevent what is essentially sabotage of the voting process by the right wing.</p>

17

<p>Yes, but how do you prevent some blow-hard idiot from doing exactly what he did? I don’t think there’s anything illegal in what he did, and I think whatever effect he had was wrong in many ways. But we’ve got freedom of speech, right? I’m sure that there is the POV that all is fair in love and war…and politics!!! I prefer Obama, but I’ve been impressed enough with Hillary that I could support either one of them in November. Now we enter the phase of extra ugly campaigning, which makes me long for the car dealer ads with the guys yelling stupid lines…</p>

18

<p>Marshall one’s forces indeed. I attended one of the largest caucuses in Kansas and Obama’s forces consisted of 60% republicans/independents How so? The chair of the democratic party presiding(read goon) had all the independents and republicans stand up so all of us could clap for them. Seriously.Since the Clinton group was herded and segregared to the back away from the Obama group when they all stood up they were in his section. Not one Clinton person stood because we were all democrats. And when the republicans and independents stood up they turned around and collectively laughed at us. So please don’t tell me these caucuses aren’t a huge sham. Btw I don’t think it was alot of fun keeping parents of young kids at a caucus which took 3 and a half hours. They don’t lack commitment to Clinton it is just that they have less time to hang around. We all see things from our own prism but having lived previously only in primary states the caucus thing was a real eye opener.</p>

19

<p>Well, I know in Texas they didn’t have to hang around-- they could just sign in and go home. I also know that if the only people who will vote for Clinton are die-hard Democrats, then she will lose to McCain in the fall. The Democrats will vote for Obama even if Clinton was their first choice. The candidate who can pull in the votes of independents in November will win. </p>

<p>I’m not an Obama supporter. I was an Edwards supporter, but one thing I learned from that experience was that there were a lot of Republicans who sincerely supported him – we got calls all the time. I even had a call from a young man in the military the day before the California primary who was tremendously upset that Edwards had pulled out – he and his whole family had always voted Republican but had all wanted to vote for Edwards.</p>

<p>I don’t know why Independents or Republicans might support Obama but there are a lot of possibilities: maybe they like his inclusive talk and his vision for America; maybe they are inspired by him. I do know that there are a lot of Republicans who are utterly disgusted with the current administration, particularly with the war and the economy – and they will be ready to vote for a Democrat in the fall. McCain supports the war and says he doesn’t know much about economics… not much of a pull for those disenchanted Republicans. </p>

<p>I agree in general that caucuses seem undemocratic – but then I see situations like Clinton’s fear-mongering tv ads, and I am not all that impressed with “democracy” – I think one argument in favor of caucuses is that they are more likely to be attended by more sophisticated/committed voters - the type who have thought through their reasons to support one candidate or another, rather than the ones who make up their mind at the last minute based on whichever side’s smear tactics against the other sways them. </p>

<p>The bottom line is that the nominating process is the time for each PARTY to select its nominee – it is meant to serve the Party’s interest, not necessarily to represent the popular will. Maybe it’s in the interest of the Democratic party to fully flesh out issues and vet their candidates – rather than rush to judgment early and then end up vulnerable to swift-boat type tactics in the fall – so a prolonged campaign may not be such a bad thing.</p>