Iowa Caucus: Been there. Done that.

Yes kids, I'm a caucus goer.

And not only that...I went to the DEMOCRAT caucus (who knew I swing both ways??)

So these are pictures of when I first wiggled my way in the door to this itty bitty elementary school cafeteria. The place was packed (and not smelling so good after a couple hours). Last caucus our precinct had 192 people show and this year there were 303. Nice improvement, yeah? So I went to my little Obama corner and stood there....and stood there....for...ev...er. My only complaint about the process is that they began 20 minutes late. When the party finally got started, they took an initial count. We all split up in various rooms around the school to take count and bond with our fellow supporters. Then we all came back for speeches. And the people giving the speeches were just regular folks - so some of them were interesting. I don't know if the candidates would have been overly thrilled by them. The Biden, Richardson, and Kucinich speeches were actually the best - too bad they didn't stand a chance.

Listening to speeches

Then we took 30 minutes for re-alignment. The only two candidates viable (getting 15% or 45 of the people there)were Hillary and Obama. Let the heckling commence! All these smaller groups kept telling us we need to "keep the conversation going", that we had people to spare, and that we should come join their group. No thanks. A few of our people defected to Edwards, and that group got enough by the end to send one (of seven) delegates. Hillary ended up with 2 and Obama got 4 (yay).

It was kinda boring, I'll be honest. And all the political crazies come out to these things, so there were some odd and funny moments. But there's something exciting standing in front of all your neighbors and raising your hand and standing up for the candidate you want to lead this country. It's watching the democratic process in live action. With real people. Very cool. (Click Here for a good stick figure demonstration of how it works)

Oh and Taylor went to the Republican caucus and wrote John McCain's name down on a piece of paper and came home. Not as exciting and fewer (noticable) crazy people. Although he and Warren sat in between two old ladies who commended him on starting Warren on the GOP track so young. It's funny because we're both pretty independent and moderate, so going to these things where it's a pep rally for the dems or republicans is just funny.