Obama won more states and more delegates on Super Tuesday…and here is an incredible number from the popular vote from msnbc.com:
With almost all of the voting in, the difference in the popular vote is less than 1/2 of 1%!
So all and all, I'd say we're tied! Crazy!
Now onto caucus night, which was without a doubt one of the craziest things I've ever been part of. The Obama campaign did an incredible job organizing precinct captains for 1,900 precincts in Colorado and without the precinct captains (PCs) trained by his campaign, I highly doubt these caucuses would have gone on (oh, and this is a long post…so most people won't read it, but it's my blog and I'll ramble if I want to).
Most of my fellow PCs arrived at Horace Mann Middle School at 5:30. The caucus was set to start at 7pm but most promotion advised folks to arrive at 6:30pm. The caucus site leader from the county democratic party was a bit harried and stressed out by our early arrival, although he acknowledged later that he was completely grateful to us (because we saved his rear). We started out with 10 precincts in a small cafeteria. Quickly, by about 6pm, we realized this would not be enough room and I was freaking out because the first people to arrive at my precinct were Hillbilly supporters! Eek! Precincts with no one with disabilities that would prevent them from going upstairs were sent up to a gymnasium. My precinct had 65 people show up and the gym had about 200+. It was mad chaos, but pretty organized chaos considering there were no chairs, we schlepped people around this school, etc. At around 7 I asked our fearless leader if he would signal us to start since we were now in three rooms and two stories of a school, and he was "in charge." He kept not answering my question because he wouldn't let me actually get the question out. Finally, he answered my question by saying I was in charge of the room and would read the rules to signal the start. Uh, I guess they don't check credentials because hello, friend…I've never been to a caucus before.
2 minutes later I was screaming at the top of my lungs reading 2 pages of caucus rules to people sitting "criss-cross applesauce" on the floor. Then, I headed over to precinct 512. It went a little something like this:
Me: "Ok, the first thing we need to do is elect a caucus chair. Is anyone interested in holding this role."
Random guy to me: "Uh. You. Duh."
Me: "Second?" "All in favor?"
The whole room said yes to me being the caucus chair…it was the most popular I've ever been!
Then began the chaos. It was hot. I was sweating and running around counting people like a crazy person (and probably shouldn't have worn a dress since I was on the floor most of the night). The "directions" for the caucus left a little to be desired. First up, we took a straw poll to see who was voting for which candidate and opened the floor up to comments.
We had a pretty heated (in a good way) discussion, and even I spoke on behalf of Obama. The whole night I was very confident, but when I was telling my neighbors why I personally support Senator Obama I got red in the face, voice quiver…the works. I am passionate about this and I think people figured it out. We then took the official vote and by vote, I mean that people raised their hands. I literally was giving people high fives so they know I counted their vote. In the end, we had 40 Obama supporters and 25 Hillary supporters, leading to a 5/3 delegate spread. PHEW! Obama won. I can rest easy…oh wait…no.
We had to vote for some senate people and a bunch of party platforms that included, and I'm not joking, "We believe Vice President Cheney should be impeached." EVERYONE voted "Yay" except for this but me and one other guy…I said "Nay! Complete waste of time and resources when politicians obviously have bigger fish to fry." I ran around counting people and slapping high fives for about 20 minutes and managed to get 'er done in about an hour.
Check out pictures 7 and 9 for images from my site…and bonus points if you spot me in image 9!
I can't underestimate how crazy the whole caucus night is, but there is something to be said for getting together with your neighbors (and yes, I saw one Obama supporter who still had his Obama sticker on his jacket walking his dog this morning and another guy on the bus to work…so from here on out I'm sure I'll be the neighborhood "crazy caucus girl.") to talk about who you support and why. But the fact that there really isn't anyone qualified or official to run the thing? Or the fact that you write down the vote on a green piece of paper and hand it to some random democratic party chair to report in? It's all very archaic and I'd definitely support going back to a primary.
Did I mention I sat on a conference call on Monday night and Forest Whitaker (as in Oscar winning actor) talked to me? Totally cool.
In the end. I was exhausted. And psyched. I knew Obama won Georgia (which is good…I have some family there and I'd hate to never be able to visit them again ;-) and I was confident he would kill in Colorado after seeing the results at our caucus location. The turnout across the state was incredible. I was even elected a delegate to the county convention (more on that later as I truthfully have no idea what it means).
I went to a fellow PC house for a "homebrew" before heading to the Obama victory party where I met up with all my Obama friends and shared our war stories….and started thinking about what's next.
I feel completely hungover (and no, it wasn't the homebrew) and I honestly thought I'd wake up this morning and be prepared to chill out and rest. But nope…still on the internet 400 hours a day, wondering how many delegates Wyoming has and touching base with HQ to get up there to campaign (all my Wyoming friends be warned…you're gonna caucus and you're gonna like it…some of you are even going to become precinct captains!). I'm also considering a weekend in Austin might be in order as good 'ol Texas has yet to vote (and who couldn't use a late February trip to Taco Cabana). I donated money to Obama's campaign today (I donate very small dollars, but that usually adds up to him getting $32 million in one month, so I figure it works). Obama's gonna win this thing and because every delegate counts, I'm ready to keep on keepin' on.
One of the most amazing lines from Obama's victory speech last night, after telling the crowd his 9-year-old daughter wasn't on stage because, as she said, "Daddy, you know that's not my thing" was when he said: We are the ones we've been waiting for. Yes we can.
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