My wife and I stood for Bernie Sanders in Iowa tonight. We are in a fairly large precinct; nearly 600 people in the room with 11 delegates to assign. Hillary claimed 6 while we pulled in 5 for Bernie.
We brought our daughters with us this year and my eldest who is 11 wanted to be involved. She got to see “Bawack" when she was three and she's always known how much that campaign meant to me. She and her friends talk politics a surprising amount for 6th graders, but this is Iowa in a caucus year!
We were in a large cafeteria and after first count (and countless speeches) only Hillary and Bernie were viable with around 65 people in the middle as uncommitted. So my daughter joined me in wading into the group and trying to convince people to come over for Bernie. She’s a shy kid and it was really something to see how this affected her. She really wanted a piece of it. She also pushed me to go up and give a speech but the few of us who stepped up into leadership roles for the Bernie camp decided to cut the speeches short because we felt like the longer process would be likely to send more undecided out the door which was plainly what the Hillary camp was trying to encourage. Instead I started handing strips of Bernie stickers to anyone who seemed like they wanted to get into the mix, told them to just look people in the eye and get that sticker on em.
It was about 20 minutes of the funniest, sweatiest politicking you’ll ever see and we convinced the bulk of them to come over. It may have been a 7-4 split without that flurry at the end so it felt really good to bring em home. And the experience for my daughter was dynamite. The main theme, of course, was fear. They felt like they should support Hillary because Trump. bleh. Any time I got them talking about that we wound up getting them to come in. And when they’d say “ok,” my daughter would give them a sticker and I’d pump my hands in the air and get a cheer out of the Bernie side. No going back after that! Then it was all smiles and welcome aboard. Love doing that.
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses unfortunately. We were flying by the seat of our pants with a lot of people who had never caucused before. Hillary’s people came in not just organized but with a handful of parliamentary tricks to play from the start. One of their leaders began the night by claiming to be a strangely enthusiastic and outspoken “undeclared” who felt like there should be a delegate who just supports whomever is the nominee and he claimed leadership of that group and said they were going to try to become viable. Right away I said, “That dude is with Hillary.” And that was rough for me. The caucus usually feels really good. People holding each other by the sleeve and making an impassioned last minute plea for why your candidate is the best. And here’s a bald face liar taking a leadership role purely for the purpose of culling these people out of the process. They had also stacked the O’Malley camp at the beginning in case they could make him viable. It was plain after first count as they just got up and joined their team that they'd been Hillary supporters all along. I can't tell you how that stuff makes me feel. And I feel like it comes from the top of the campaign. Leaders lead and that’s where some of my neighbors follow. And yes, as soon as the persuading started the “undeclared” guy who tried to lead them out just walked over and joined his team as though he’d been with them all night. Which, of course, he had.
So I had a great experience in some ways, especially doing this with my daughter but I left hot under the collar and a little queasy as well. The speech giving liar who took leadership of the undeclareds was wearing an Obama shirt of all things. This definitely added to my aggravation. I was there working with a handful of people who had helped us win this precinct for Obama in '08 with NONE of the cheap tricks they were pulling. I felt he had no right to take the mantle of Obama while behaving in a way we wouldn’t have touched in that campaign. Bring as many in as you can and make your appeals.
I’m going to stop now. My energy has been running too high leading up to this and it’s time to cool out.