decidedlyodd

At the beginning, the caucus was total mayhem. I arrived at Seattle Central Community College where several precincts on Capitol Hill were having their caucuses. There were many hundreds of people waiting in all sorts of lines and there was nobody directing people on where to go or what to do. Afterwards, one caucus worker told us there had been about 1600 people there for one caucus or another, the largest site in the city.

The caucus itself was pretty interesting. My precinct was small (only about 3 small city blocks) but there were 92 of my neighbors there crammed into a small classroom at the college. It became apparent immediately that this precinct was overwhelmingly young, white, hip and iPhone possessing (I swear I saw close to 10 of them in the 2 hours I was there). In fact, somebody from the Stranger was even there blogging about our precinct meeting. The comments on that blog post are particularly funny because my roommate was the guy running our caucus. Here’s a random picture of when we were counting the first vote:

In the end, our precinct (WA 43-2547) elected 6 delegates for Obama and 2 for Clinton, which seems to be in sync with Obama blowing Clinton out of the water across Washington state today. The final vote was something like 68 for Obama, 15 for Clinton, 1 for Gravel and 3 uncommitted. Afterwards, Ben, Jeff and I went over to a post-caucus party where there were basically a bunch of guys from the Orca swim team. It was fun to talk about our caucus experiences and politics in general. One thing that seemed to stand out for all of us was the number of so-called A-list gays caucusing for Hillary Clinton. There seemed to be a disproportionate number of attractive, well preened gay men and several middle aged people on the Hillary side, while more D-list gays (and I include myself in this list) and dirty, young hipsters (and I mean that in the best way possible) were caucusing for Obama. At the party a friend commented that this was perhaps the effect of establishment political gays (such as those affiliated with Human Rights Campaign, aka HRC) siding with the more establishment candidate–Hillary Clinton (or the other HRC).

Anyhow, the whole process was really interesting. It was quite fascinating to meet your neighbors and discuss the choice of a presidential candidate with them. I admit it’s much more exciting and thoughtful than coming in for a primary (which is what I’ve always done in past presidential elections), although it’s somewhat disappointing that those who can’t make it to the specific caucus location at the specific time are excluded from the process. Still, I’d say I consider myself a fan of the caucus process now. At least my caucus was much more personal and interactive, both of which seem to be lacking in politics today.