Caucus Day! (updated: Obama takes it!)

From the Seattle PI: The breadth of Obama's victory in Washington matched its depth: with 94 percent of caucus results posted, Obama beat Clinton in every county that had reported as well as in every one of the 16 legislative districts entirely or partly within King County.

My blog entry from earlier in the day...
Taken from the Washington State Democrats website.

Still undecided? Go to the Electoral Compass to see how your views on the issues line up with the candidates. (Thanks J, for sending this website my way!)

It's Caucus day here in Washington state, and there's been an excited buzz all week leading up to this. I personally know of at least ten people who are all going to be attending a caucus for the very first time today, and we're all a little nervous because no one really knows what happens once we're there. Yesterday I finally met a lady who knows someone who attended a caucus once - kind of like knowing a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend thing. Well after today there will be a whole lot less newbies to the process. Hmmm... I wonder if I can sell "I'm a Caucus Virgin" t-shirts outside the steel workers hall today (my caucus location)? Should have thought of that a week ago, darn it! ;P

In preparing for today, I found a couple of fun resources to get myself ready and answer all my questions. One was sent in an email by MoveOn.org: Fuse's Presidential Caucus Guide (In which we address all your excuses for not going). I hope they are right because I plan to challenge two of those issues - my 8 year old has a bday party to attend immediately following the caucus, so I'm bringing her along. I've also heard that while these are only supposed to take 90 minutes or so, they can go longer and get fairly heated, so while I don't want to disappoint my daughter, or the bday boy who the party is for, I may see if I really can sign in and leave. Granted, my recap of the caucus experience would not be nearly as interesting, but I'd get to have my say in the process, and I'd make a couple of kids all the more happy.

For a fun, sort of "caucus 101" walk through the caucus process (and to gain an understanding of sub-caucuses), this YouTube video from Franken for Senate titled How to Caucus was really helpful. For another informational video put out by the Washington state Democrats go here.

To continue your education on the nomination process for presidential candidates in the democratic party, you need to gain an understanding of the role of the Super Delegates. These are mostly elected officials, or other party leaders from the democratic party (like ex-president Bill Clinton, Al Gore, the governor of Washington state, etc.)who are given their own vote at the national convention. Their voting power actually represents 40% of the total delegates available within the party! That's huge, especially with how close the numbers have been running up to this point for Hillary and Barack. There's a brief article here about who the super delegates are, why the democrats use them, and what role they've played in past elections.

With the clarification that we could not only take our kids to the caucus, but also sign-in with our vote and leave, both hubby and I were able to take part in the caucus. All the children are happy, birthday parties will be attended, and I feel like my opinion got to matter to some extent. Best of all I convinced hubby to participate in the process (and he even voted for the same candidate that I did!). I told him that at the next caucus I'm going to stick around, and I'm not making any other plans. I definitely missed out on some of the nitty gritty political discussion that was going to be taking place, and that would have been fun to be a part of.

I have no idea how this is going to turn out today. There were hundreds of people at our caucus location, and there were three precincts reporting there. We passed another caucus location (a middle school), and its parking lot was so full that they were parking cars on the lawn, and in a lot across the street. Still more people were making their way on foot. When we signed in, the sheets each contained space for five voters to sign and list the candidate they were supporting. There was a line below that if you chose to change your vote once the caucus is underway. My sheet had 2 for Obama, 1 for Clinton, hubby's sheet had one for each plus two undecideds, and he saw another sheet that was all Clinton. I think our particular area tends towards moderate dems, so I wouldn't be surprised if Clinton took away more delegates from our precinct, even with Obama's generally strong turn outs in caucus states. I guess we just have to wait and see!