Written by Adam Gessaman. Originally appeared at Idly.org. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Well, I went to my local caucus today.

When we showed up at Fairhaven Middle School at about 9:50, we found that the parking lot was largely full, and the gym was also apparently nearing its 999 person capacity. The crowd continued to flow in, and it became incredibly warm and crowded, until the Fire Marshall showed up to usher about 500-750200-300 people out of the gym into the hallways.

At 10:30 am, the chairman of the Whatcom County Democratic Party welcomed everyone, read the rules, and we got down to the serious business of caucusing. I was in a district that was predominantly college students with only a handful of older folks (mostly 50-75). The most of the older folks gave us that “damn kids who throw loud parties in my neighborhood” look at least once. At the outset, Dean had 15 supporters, Kerry 10, Kucinich 8, Clark 2, Edwards 2, and a handful of undecideds. So, the Precinct President (or whatever the hell his title was) sent all of the supporters for “non-viable” candidates over to talk about who they would support. At this point, a smarmy Edwards supporter who was decked out in full political attire (neatly pressed black pants and white shirt with gaudy flag tie and flag pin) managed to swing three undecideds to Edwards, thus giving him 15% and a delegate. Basically, it could have gone down two ways:

1. He swings three or more supporters and gets a delegate the honest way or


2. He convinces the undecideds and un-viables to elect an undecided delegate (which he would promote himself for) and thereby Edwards would get a vote anyway.

Essentially, Edwards was border-line viable in our precinct and any of the other ones I observed. The eventual break-down of the delegates in my precinct (55) went like this:

• 3 for Dean


• 2 for Kerry


• 1 for Kucinich


• 1 for Edwards

Via an anonymous source, I was told that insider polling suggests, somewhat consistent with my own experience, that Kerry took 28.05% to Dean’s 22.09% state-wide as of 12:56 PM (162 of 604 locations reporting, 1460 of 6545 precincts). The numbers are still rolling in from my source as they are updated, so I will update this post as I get them. I saw what I would estimate support at about 30% for both Dean and Kerry, with Kucinich supporters being a very vocal — and more than a bit scary — minority. Clark’s decision to by-pass Washington led to a very small minority showing up to support him, so I would be surprised if he was even viable in most precincts.

Overall, it was an enjoyable foray into the political process, but I should note that I now understand why so many people are hesitant to enter into politics — it was loud, rather disorganized and highly-charged in that gym. If I was’t driven to be active in the ouster of President Bush, I would have had second thoughts about walking into that zoo.

The hallway outside the gym was full of caucus-goers