Caucus Night and Math

On Thursday night I attended my first caucus. It was a fairly interesting experience.
First I will tell you who I supported and why. I consider myself an independent although I tend to favor the Democrats. I have voted for some Republicans over the years, like Senator Grassley, and various other candidates in more local elections.

As I looked at this year's slate of Presidential candidates, both Republican and Democrat, I saw several good choices. I am old enough, or should I say experienced enough, to know that no one is going to be perfect. There is no candidate that I agree with on everything but my first priority was to look for someone who might be able to unite the country. Unless that happens we are going to continue to have gridlock. For example I agree with Hillary Clinton on a lot of issues but she is easily the most polarizing candidate that has a reasonable chance to win. If she were to win the Presidency, her best intentions and best programs would never come to fruition because of the intense hatred so many of her enemies have for her and her husband. Her ideas would be rejected by many just because they came from her, not necessarily because they were bad ideas.

Of the remaining "viable" candidates, I felt that Obama, McCain, Richardson, Huckabee, and Edwards (in that order) were the most likely to be able to work with the other party in a constructive way and unite the country. That is the most important thing in my opinion because the challenges we face, both foreign and domestic, are going to require a united effort. Immigration and health care are good examples. There is basically unanimous agreement that these are problems that need to be addressed but nothing has happened in the last seven years because of gridlock.

Barack Obama does lack experience in certain areas but I feel he has the most unifying message (which he first outlined at the Democratic convention in 2004)and I think he has the potential to be a great President. He has brought a lot of young people back into the political process and seems to give the most hope for uniting the country and starting a groundswell of momentum to make things better WITHOUT denigrating the other side. I also have the feeling that if Obama became President that it would be a positive in the eyes of most of the rest of the world. That would help us in defeating the actual threats to the freedom of our country and our allies.

Now on to the caucus on Thursday night. My precinct in Dickinson County had 121 people that showed up to express their preference. We were told that for a candidate to be "viable" that they would need to have at least 15 percent of that total. A little mental math on my part (move the decimal point one place to the left, take half and add it on) told me that would be 18 people. We then moved to our separate groups. We in the Obama group had way more than 18; Clinton and Edwards also had more than 18. Biden had about six or seven and Richardson had three. Those people had to reorganize and they received "pitches" from the other three groups. Some went to Edwards, but most came to Obama. In the end, Obama had 60 voters, Clinton had 32 and Edwards had 29.

Our particular precinct, based on population, had been assigned seven delegates to the state convention, so those seven had to be divided among the three viable candidates. So of course they took the number of voters in each group divided by the total number of voters (121) and then multiplied by seven. Edwards got about 1.68, Clinton about 1.85 and Obama about 3.47. By the rules they had to round to the nearest whole number (no partial delegates!) so Edwards and Clinton received two delegates each and Obama got three delegates. Those were the three numbers reported to the state Democratic party and those are the numbers used in determining the percentages that are reported on television and in the newspaper.
As an Obama supporter, I was a little disappointed since we had almost twice as many votes as each of the other two but only got one more delegate.

From what I had heard I was expecting the process to last from one to two hours but it was actually over for the voters in about half an hour. I'm glad I participated and it was interesting to see some of the people I know and who they favored. I especially respect the people who originally stood up for Biden and Richardson, knowing that they would be unlikely to reach that 15% level. (Early on, a few months ago, I had favored Richardson but I ended up feeling that Obama would be more likely to unite and inspire the country as a whole. Their policy differences are slight.)

Barack Obama does remind me a little of John Kennedy (once again showing my age). He is young, an inspiring speaker, relativley inexperienced on the national stage, has to overcome a possible prejudice (Kennedy as a Catholic and Obama as an African-American) and overall gives people hope for a new era in politics and a new era for America. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we are about to experience a significant historical moment in American history.