(no subject)
It's been a relatively exciting couple of days. First, on Saturday, I went outside, stood in the cold for a good, long time, and eventually saw...
Unfortunately, an unrecognizable still from a video I took. But wait!
ZOOM IN.
ENHANCE.
That's some really crappy enhancing. Anyway it's Obama.
Obama and Clinton both held rallies here in Bangor. The turnout was roughly 10,000 for Obama and about 2,000 for Hillary. I took it as a sign of things to come! I was about 30 people away from getting inside when they shut the doors, but I did have a good vantage point when he climbed onto a table outside and spoke to all of us who didn't make it in. I got full video of that, for posterity.
Then earlier today I walked over to my caucus location. I haven't reregistered since I moved, so I found myself in the huge, slow voter registration line. I was nearly in the door when I ran into this guy:
That's John Kerry strolling casually from the Bangor Auditorium parking lot, apparently without a care in the world. He shook a bunch of hands and went inside. A few minutes later, he was speaking to the crowd (huge turnout, by the way) while I was stuck in the lobby filling out my registration card. Apparently I have a knack for barely missing speeches.
After being registered, I found the room for my district and got ready for some hardcore caucusing. A caucus is an interesting process. Most of us in the US are used to booths and secret ballots and such. A caucus is pretty much the opposite of all that. It begins with the room dividing itself into sections, one for each candidate. The people for each candidate all stand together. An initial count is done. After that you get a chance to shout and convince everyone else to join your side using pretty much any tactics you like short of threatening physical violence. It isn't a quiet process. After a while another count is taken, and this is the final vote.
In my district, this was initially confusing for the people trying to count, because Obama supporters were crowding the Hillary supporters. This is because the Obama side of the room had no more space left to stand in. This realization was cause for some loud cheering. Once that was sorted out, we did the initial count. 199 for Obama to 86 for Clinton. More cheering.
After that was the chance to shout at the other side. The Hillary side held signs up as if to block the onslaught. Obama's side did some shouting, but in the end nobody budged. The only thing that ended up changing is that some people, after running the math, figured out that if our district got an uncommitted delegate, it would, of course, take a percentage of the vote from both Hillary and Obama. This percentage was enough to lose Hillary a delegate, but wasn't enough to affect Obama. So a few Obama supporters went for that. By this time cries of "YES WE CAN" were emanating from surrounding rooms, so my guess was Obama was enjoying a healthy margin in the other districts as well.
With that much decided, I went home to wait for the results. Which were: Bangor for Obama about 2 to 1, and Maine for Obama by a large margin. This makes us the fifth victory in a row for Obama, the 19th state that he has won so far, and, if his margin creeps just a percentage point higher, the 11th state (compared to Hillary's 1) that he's won with 60% or more of the vote. With the rest of the month favoring him and Hillary's campaign apparently running out of steam, it's looking good for B. Hussein Obama. Look for the nomination to be decided on or before March 4th. Texas and Ohio will probably decide it on that date, if we get that far.
In conclusion, if you ever get the chance to participate in a caucus, I wouldn't pass it up. Yelling at people you disagree with is the purest distillation of the democratic process.
Edit: Here is the speech I recorded.
Unfortunately, an unrecognizable still from a video I took. But wait!
ZOOM IN.
ENHANCE.
That's some really crappy enhancing. Anyway it's Obama.
Obama and Clinton both held rallies here in Bangor. The turnout was roughly 10,000 for Obama and about 2,000 for Hillary. I took it as a sign of things to come! I was about 30 people away from getting inside when they shut the doors, but I did have a good vantage point when he climbed onto a table outside and spoke to all of us who didn't make it in. I got full video of that, for posterity.
Then earlier today I walked over to my caucus location. I haven't reregistered since I moved, so I found myself in the huge, slow voter registration line. I was nearly in the door when I ran into this guy:
That's John Kerry strolling casually from the Bangor Auditorium parking lot, apparently without a care in the world. He shook a bunch of hands and went inside. A few minutes later, he was speaking to the crowd (huge turnout, by the way) while I was stuck in the lobby filling out my registration card. Apparently I have a knack for barely missing speeches.
After being registered, I found the room for my district and got ready for some hardcore caucusing. A caucus is an interesting process. Most of us in the US are used to booths and secret ballots and such. A caucus is pretty much the opposite of all that. It begins with the room dividing itself into sections, one for each candidate. The people for each candidate all stand together. An initial count is done. After that you get a chance to shout and convince everyone else to join your side using pretty much any tactics you like short of threatening physical violence. It isn't a quiet process. After a while another count is taken, and this is the final vote.
In my district, this was initially confusing for the people trying to count, because Obama supporters were crowding the Hillary supporters. This is because the Obama side of the room had no more space left to stand in. This realization was cause for some loud cheering. Once that was sorted out, we did the initial count. 199 for Obama to 86 for Clinton. More cheering.
After that was the chance to shout at the other side. The Hillary side held signs up as if to block the onslaught. Obama's side did some shouting, but in the end nobody budged. The only thing that ended up changing is that some people, after running the math, figured out that if our district got an uncommitted delegate, it would, of course, take a percentage of the vote from both Hillary and Obama. This percentage was enough to lose Hillary a delegate, but wasn't enough to affect Obama. So a few Obama supporters went for that. By this time cries of "YES WE CAN" were emanating from surrounding rooms, so my guess was Obama was enjoying a healthy margin in the other districts as well.
With that much decided, I went home to wait for the results. Which were: Bangor for Obama about 2 to 1, and Maine for Obama by a large margin. This makes us the fifth victory in a row for Obama, the 19th state that he has won so far, and, if his margin creeps just a percentage point higher, the 11th state (compared to Hillary's 1) that he's won with 60% or more of the vote. With the rest of the month favoring him and Hillary's campaign apparently running out of steam, it's looking good for B. Hussein Obama. Look for the nomination to be decided on or before March 4th. Texas and Ohio will probably decide it on that date, if we get that far.
In conclusion, if you ever get the chance to participate in a caucus, I wouldn't pass it up. Yelling at people you disagree with is the purest distillation of the democratic process.
Edit: Here is the speech I recorded.