My experience at a NV caucus last week as an Obama volunteer [View All]

[mrreowwr_kittty]

It was an interesting experience, to say the least. Eye-opening. Disheartening, disillusioning, and disappointing as well. 4 volunteers from Phoenix, we drove home from the caucus alternating between fuming anger and numb confusion, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of us.

We were assigned to a young staffer who had been working the her rural region by herself and was grateful for the help. We arrived Thursday night and got to work early Friday morning, canvassing most of the day and making phone calls in the evening. One volunteer and I knocked on doors in a depressed railroad community, which was one of the bigger of the 3 tiny towns we were covering.

On Saturday (caucus day) we made a last-ditch effort to get out votes by putting door hangers out in the morning. We arrived at the caucus location promptly at 10, as we were told not to come any earlier. Several Clinton supporters, who had clearly been there for a while were standing with several signs in the corner of the parking lot. Seems that they had tried to enter the building to put the signs up, which was against the rules. We chatted with the Clinton precinct captain, a strapping macho dude with a handlebar mustache. I told him I was impressed with the operation they had going there and he proudly claimed that they had over a hundred pledged supporters for Sen. Clinton. My fellow volunteer and I quickly realized that things were not going to go well for us, given the difficulty we had nailing down the dozen or so pledges we had in the previous day we'd spent canvassing.

As several more Clinton supporters showed up we continued our conversation with Mr. Precinct Captain. He was a chatty fellow and obviously pleased to be talking to 2 women from out of town. He kept calling us "the Obama girls". He let us know that he used to work in Hollywood and was now singlehandedly fighting the meth trade and police corruption in town. He confided in us that they'd gotten emailed instructions from the campaign about how to discourage voters who were not for Clinton. He pulled out the memo that was circulated to Clinton people. The one that said "It's not illegal unless they tell you it is." He told us that between stuff like that and some of her policy positions he was "this close to going uncommitted today". Yet he was not deterred from trying to make a deal with us to close the caucus doors early. He said that since they expected up to 200 people that we should agree, if it got to that number, to not let any more people in even if it was prior to 12. Fire codes, you know. We told him that we were volunteers and could make no such agreements. We were going to follow the rules as stated.

By 10:30, voters were arriving in droves. Clearly the majority were eager Clinton supporters. We stood outside with our Obama stickers, hoping to catch a few supporters or undecideds. We were glad to see a few of our pledges showing up and there was also small but steady stream of Edwards supporters. The 17 year old Obama precinct captain and his dad were there to organize our folks. When voters showed up undecided, several Clinton volunteers would surround them and badger them to put on a sticker. Most of them refused but a few succumbed. This was a small town where everybody knew everybody.

The precinct chair did the best he could to enforce the caucus rules. He wouldn't let anyone have signs closer than 100 ft. from the building. He wouldn't open the doors until 10. No signs on the walls and no dragging all the chairs and couches into one candidate's corner (as the Clinton people tried). When Clinton volunteers showed up with platters of food, he told them they had to make it available to everyone or they couldn't have it there. When they tried to close the doors at 11:30 he refused to allow it. The Chair was for Edwards, and tried to be very fair with everyone. He was plenty disgusted with the aggressive behavior of the Clinton people that morning. He told us after the caucus that Mustachioed Precinct Captain and the staffer from California were so obnoxious and aggressive that he threatened to call the cops on them.

It became a melee because the space was small and some problems ensued, despite Precinct Chair's vigilance. People were given double-sided unofficial ballots to help with assessing the count. They were just these slips of paper where they'd check off their preferred candidate, and second choice if applicable. We discovered that a few undecided voters had been told to mark their first choice as "uncommitted". It was before noon and these were not official ballots but the facilitators refused to give them new ones and told them they were stuck with uncommitted as a first choice. Also, some Edwards and Obama supporters said they were told that they had to leave if their candidate wasn't viable. We assured them that they could make a second choice if that was the case. We checked with the chair and the facilitators and they said they told no one any such thing.

In the caucus, Sen. Clinton ended up with slightly more than half the roughly 120 caucusers. Edwards got about 40 and Obama wasn't viable, having only 15. We were 3 short, which was a bummer because 3 of our pledges didn't show up. The Obama people and the few uncommitted got their second choices. 2 undecideds went to Clinton and the remainder and all the Obama people went to Edwards. There was no persuasion involved. Most of the non-Clinton people were so annoyed by the Clinton people that they almost unanimously agreed to go to Edwards immediately. This was what they told us, not speculation on my part.

After all that, the final count was 12 county delegates for Clinton and 10 for Edwards.

We made the 3 hour drive back to Vegas to report back to the HQ there. We described our experience and the field coordinator told us that it was nothing compared to the reports that were flying in from all over the state. I'm guessing that our experience was pretty mild because we had a precinct chair who was well versed in the rules and enforced them.

I fail to see why the leadership of Clinton campaign cannot see the long term consequences of their scorched-earth strategies. There were thousands of enthusiastic, brilliant, and amazing young Obama supporters in NV this weekend. They are royally pissed at the Clintons and it's foolish to count on them to join Hillary like the Deaniacs joined Kerry in '04. The ones I met said they were seriously considering supporting Bloomberg if he got in the race. Do you really want part of your legacy to be that you squandered the finest young activists of the Democratic party to the altar of your ambition, Bill and Hillary?