On the Ground at the Washington State Landslide

by Casey Mills, 2008-02-11

Coming from San Francisco, the idea of entering a tiny, brightly lit room with a bunch of people you disagree with politically and coming away all limbs intact seemed like a hopelessly naïve one. I arrived at Saturday’s Washington State caucus with earplugs to drown out the shouting, a mouth guard to keep my teeth intact, and a phone pre-dialed to 911 once the carnage would surely begin. Who would’ve thought I’d find bunch of friendly, fleece-clad neighbors respectfully debating the merits of their candidates, and championing democracy the victor rather than either side? Despite the beauty of these sentiments, Washington will have to forgive me as I indulge in a little California attitude now that it’s over – 68-31, baby, we won and we won big!!!

The Build-Up:

Sometimes you can feel momentum in the air, like electricity before a thunderstorm. Political junkies know what I’m talking about, and the high that comes with it can keep you engaged in campaigns way longer than reason or common sense would dictate.

The past week certainly felt like that for the Obama camp. For starters, Obama trounced Clinton in fund-raising in the state, taking $1.7 million compared to just under a million for Hillary. Preceding primaries also indicated Obama enjoyed an edge here, as caucus states overwhelmingly favored him, and Washington’s wealth of young and well-educated voters played to his strengths.

The good news continued when a poll released February 4 gave Obama a thirteen point lead among Democrats, a shocking turnaround from an October ‘07 poll showing Clinton up 22 points. SEIU, the state’s largest union of 100,000 members, announced its support for Obama days before the primary. And Governor Christine Gregoire soon followed, a major coup for the Obama camp after Clinton had nabbed the other two members of the state’s female triumvirate, Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray.

Emotionally, however, the biggest boost came from Obama’s visit to Seattle. Clinton had shown up Thursday night to fill an old warehouse south of town with about 5,000 people, respectable but underwhelming. The next day Obama walked on to a stage at Key Arena, the Seattle Sonics basketball stadium, to a full house of more than 18,000 screaming supporters. 3,000 more were turned away. For those who haven’t seen him, the hype is real – passionate and moving, he captivated the place for 50 minutes, and supporters left excited about the big day.

Caucus Day Hits:

Caucus-mania hit at a fever pitch by Saturday, as it became clear how much was at stake. Washington holds both a Democratic primary and caucus, but for some silly reason no one remembers, all delegates are awarded based on the caucuses. There were 78 delegates to hand out, the biggest prize in the country that day, and with a tight and protracted race on the horizon, every one of them would count.

The main event began at 1:30, and my caucus location, like most of them throughout the state, was completely packed by 1:00. Caucusing occurs by precinct here, and six of them jammed into an elementary school near my house to make their decision, with 100 to 150 folks showing up per precinct. They signed in and wrote down their candidate of choice, then milled about, with conversation ranging from Clinton’s health care proposal to why the city can’t seem to fix that stupid pothole on 42nd Street.

One bizarre element of the process involved how the Democratic Party checks voter registration before caucuses. They don’t. It’s an honor system, and you simply write your name and address on the dotted line, then join in. I had a friend who said he met a couple from Canada who happened to be in town for the caucus, and participated for the fun of it. Several people told me thinly-disguised Republicans showed up at their caucus and pushed hard for Hillary. And at my own caucus, two kids participated that looked like they hadn’t reached high school yet, let along age 18.

At 1:45 the precinct officers informed each precinct of their vote counts based on the sign in sheets - ours was 86 Obama, 31 Clinton, 6 undecided and one Kucinich (of course). The time now came for each party to argue their case. Once again, party officials dealt with this very lackadaisically – the official rules stated one representative per candidate could speak for one minute each, but reports varied widely about what actually happened. Some followed the rules, others opened up into free-form debates amongst participants, while still others, like mine, engaged in a sort of hybrid.

Our precinct officer decided that if anyone wanted to speak, they should be able to, and so we had pro-Obama and pro-Clinton people trading off arguments for about 10 minutes. The debate started with climate change, moved on to electability, and ended with what I thought was a stirring speech from my wife about which candidate would be best able to restore people’s faith in their country.

Anyone who wanted to switch was then given the opportunity. Apparently trying to snag those who hadn’t made up their minds represented the real battle on caucus day, and my experience and most reports backed this up. Three of the undecideds joined Obama, three remained undecided, but not a single person who had already declared a candidate jumped ship.

Each precinct then had a number of delegates based on population to hand out. Our precinct had seven delegates to assign, and five went to Obama, two to Clinton. Each candidate’s supporters then elected their delegates, with the Obama camp making a misguided decision and voting in yours truly. The elected delegates were then informed they would move on to the district convention, where another election will occur to choose those that move on to the county convention, and so on until 78 remain to attend the big show in Colorado.

With that, everyone filed out and headed home.

Reflections on the Day:

Before I bask in the warm glow of Obama’s 68 – 31 victory, it’s worth commenting on the caucus process itself. Despite my California snarkiness, democracy did win the day Saturday, as over 200,000 people – twice the number of people who caucused in the last presidential primary – showed up to cast their vote. From everything I heard, the debates remained overwhelming civil and respectful, with many speeches about the candidates beginning with, “I like both of them, but I chose so-and-so because…”

It’s a remarkable change in the psychology of the voter when they must physically show their faces and let the people they live nearby associate that face with a candidate. There is no hiding behind a curtain, no filing out the ballot in the comfort of your own home, no sitting behind a computer and blogging about how stupid supporters of the other candidate are. It creates a real sense of participation, a desire to be informed about your candidate because you’re publicly declaring your support, and it breeds empathy for the other side - after all, these are your neighbors.

Speaking of which, the event served equally well as a caucus and an old-fashioned neighborhood get-together. I met several people who live near me I would have never met otherwise, and I overheard a lot of conversations that had more to do with improving the neighborhood than politics. I still have my concerns about caucuses, primarily involving low-income service workers who can’t take a Saturday off to show up. But the civic benefit of them seems undeniable.

Now on to Obama. Some encouraging signs came out of Washington, perhaps the most so being that early reports show Obama did well with Latino voters here. Obama took every county in the state of Washington save one, and enjoyed support in both the heavily Democratic cities west of the Cascades and the die-hard Republican land east of them. Obama also proved once again that he generates just as much support amongst whites as blacks, with Washington’s overwhelmingly white population (87 percent) backing him strongly.

He also dominated with the younger voters that are proving to be a lynchpin of his campaign, one of the trends I’m most excited about. At the Obama rally on Friday, I witnessed countless high school kids that had either ditched school or been allowed a field trip to go see the speech. Their energy blew me away, with the type of cheering and clapping usually reserved for boy bands and movie stars. Whether Obama wins or loses, getting these kids engaged in the Democratic Party should be considered a major achievement of his campaign.

Finally, Obama cemented his dominance among well-educated middle and upper class voters. As evidenced by his fund-raising success here, these are the type of voters with money to spend, and as the momentum continues to grow for Obama, they will continue to dip in to their pockets to support him. They’re also the type of voters willing to walk precincts and phone-bank in the general election, which would make the sometimes surprisingly purple state of Washington more likely to go Obama. Of course, all the Republican candidates combined pulled 13,475 votes here on Saturday, while Obama pulled 21,629 alone. Like everywhere else, things look very, very good for Democrats come November.

This thing is far from over, with superdelegates likely to play a major role. Obama addressed this issue while in Seattle, arguing again that should he win amongst voters, it should be the superdelegates duty to enact the will of those voters. My guess is that these arguments will fall on deaf ears once the superdelegates realize the political favors they could win from selling their vote to the highest bidder come convention day.

I don’t think it’s going reach that point. Obama has enormous momentum, and keeps proving in state after state that he can carry a remarkably diverse amount of demographic categories. He’s staying way ahead in the money race, and I think that divide will only grow as he performs well in the remaining February primaries. Hillary’s superdelegate lead will also narrow, as many of those who joined her camp early on did so because of the perceived inevitability of her campaign. As that inevitability wears off, more and more elected officials who haven’t declared their endorsements yet will feel more comfortable backing Obama.

This is all conjecture of course, and being a Bay Area sports fan the past ten years has taught me to expect defeat to dull the blow of inevitable loss. But that’s not going to stop me from celebrating this victory up in the soggy Northwest and keeping my hope alive for the future. Because, after all, we won, baby, and we won big.

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