Over in the gym of Stevens Elementary, around 1pm, it was decidedly not a madhouse, though it was hot and sweaty. The precinct lines were orderly and easy to find, the conversation level was at a low murmur, there was even a woman sitting in a chair and knitting. Or crocheting. People talked about their everyday stuff (the onset of Osteomyelitis, working for Microsoft) and declared their affinities (“I’m Obama, I’m on the list”). I was mainly surprised to discover that there wasn’t one person I knew in the room, and only one or two that I recognized. After signing in, and being called back because I’d neglected to fill in the most important slot (UNDECIDED), I sat down and waited for the show to start.
By 1:15, it was becoming something of a madhouse, and people had to start stripping off layers of clothing to keep from being overwhelmed by heat. Not nearly enough folding chairs were available, so people stood in clusters while the registration lines snaked around and through them. Still, the tone was eager and cordial, even among the preachers.
In my left ear, an Obama proselytizer with short hair and a “Kennedy” button on his North Face fleece wooed an elementary school teacher like a Mormon elder on your doorstep. He extolled Obama’s $4,000 per student tuition credit, something I missed in his stump speech, so I listened in. I was eager for the moment when he would turn his pitch to me. His tone was a big turn-off, so I fanned myself with a Hillary flyer and waited some more. My undecidedness isn’t theoretical—I really can’t truly choose between these two candidates, both of whom I admire and mistrust separately and equally. I have been hoping to hear someone indicate to me just exactly what it is about either of the two—beyond the theater of the campaign, beyond the theater of their similar-but-not-the-same platforms, beyond even the theater of their voting records—is the reason I should want them to be president. I still have Kerry damage, I suppose. That sense of throwing all your will and hope and credulity behind a guy who just kind of wasn’t there, just because you had to get behind someone, and the long (three years and counting) walk of shame that followed. Not because he didn’t win, though that made it insufferable. But because who among us would vote for him today? That’s my objection to politics in general, I suppose: the arbitrariness. And for all the change rhetoric I keep hearing, I’m not fully convinced that either senator is going to be able to represent the kind of holistic moral/intellectual/ethical redirection the office so desperately needs. They might, though. I can’t decide. I wasn’t alone. There were 16 of us in my precinct, out of 229, when the first vote was tallied.
It wasn’t exactly true that I didn’t recognize anyone in that gym. This precinct is generally middle-to-upper-middle class liberal minded overwhelmingly (but no, not entirely) white Capitol Hill. My people, for whatever it’s worth. There were laptops, candidate stickers, conspicuous glasses frames, abundant fleece, slogan-bearing t-shirts, anti-war buttons both fatuous and sympathetic, the odd unironic mustache, the odd ironic one, etc. It was so tempting to generalize about them, about us, for the sake of clinging to the good old Seattle (or is it just adolescent) illusion that just because we inhabit the same neighborhood, the same commercial demographic and class prerogatives, didn’t mean we had anything in common. But the simple fact of not knowing anyone, not one single person, made it feel both unfair and irrelevant. I didn’t feel alienated. I felt like I was part of an actual literal community—that horrible, stupid word. And I was. We all were. For that, the caucus felt useful and positive. The one generalization that resonated: we were all there, all participating (or trying to), all eager for our effort to mean something. So we have that, at least, in common. Which is not nothing.
After the Pledge of Allegiance (is there anyone among us who doesn’t choke on “under god”?), the guy from the 43rd district announced on the almost inaudible PA that for the first time in many years, “Washington has a relevant role in the nomination process.” The whole place exploded with giddy applause. (He followed by saying how today would determine where ABC News, CNN, even Fox News would broadcast from tonight. There were predictable boos for Fox. I was hoping they would carry over to curse the idea that we should pay any attention to what those news outlets did or said, but no such luck. At the very least, the idea that the importance of today’s caucus was that it would energize Wolf Blitzer was fractionally less inspiring than the idea that we were helping pick the Democratic candidate.)
“Is anyone here undecided?” It was the guy with the Kennedy badge and the Mormon mien. I turned and told him I was, hoping for discourse, but prepared for a verbal sparring match. Not that I have strong convictions about Obama, for or against. It’s more that I’ve developed a massive shoulder chip against politcal acolytes. He asked if I was undecided between Clinton or Obama, which confused me. He wondered if maybe I might still be for Edwards. I said I liked Edwards but there didn’t seem to be much point in being “for” him now. He countered, “there’s not much point in voting for Hillary, either, man,” and was very proud of the line, which I fully walked right into. He asked me if I knew who Bill Maher was, and I said yes (without bothering to disclose that I the first time I saw Maher was on the last episode of the old Max Headroom TV show in 1988). He told me how on Maher’s show, a leading Republican pollster said the Rs were champing at the bit at the prospect of a Clinton vs. McCain race, because Hillary mobilizes the right, and Obama isn’t as polarizing a figure and that’s probably the most important thing to think about going into the general election. I said I thought that voting for a president based on strategy like that was immoral. He said this, which I interrupted our conversation to write down: “Voting isn’t an expression of ideas. It’s a pragmatic decision of the lesser of two evils.” The thing is, I know that’s essentially true. But I also absolutely refuse to believe it. More to the point, this from the guy who’s making the case for the candidate of change? In fairness, this guy was just trying to say something he though would convince a political simpleton and contrarian to write his candidate’s name on the sheet so he could work his way up the ladder of delegates or whatever. You can’t blame him. And in the end, he had a VERY good day.
There then followed a period of everyone in the room seemingly talking at once while “votes” (or whatever you’re supposed to call them) were tallied. At length. The somewhat beleaguered woman running our precinct festivities introduced herself by saying “Hi, I’m Wendy and I don’t know what I’m doing.” This seemed to be the general trend; given that the turn out was more or less unprecedented, the efforts at pre-organization were a little undernourished (nowhere near as bad as the SCCCCC fiasco, it appears). But we eventually got to the part I was most looking forward to, when people got up to make the case for their candidates. And it was the part that was the most complicated. The gym was transformed into a giant speaker’s corner, an explosion of dueling advocacies—people up on tables, shouting about why Obama represented hope, or why Hillary represented experience, or why Hillary’s experience was actually a negative given the current climate, or why given the current climate, what we really needed was an agent of change. There was no part of this scene that excited even a whisper of cynicism in me. Some of the speakers were articulate and passionate, others were lackluster and cowed. But they all got up and were heard. Well, not all were heard, because some were drowned out by smatterings of applause from across the room or people shouting at other people to keep it down. It did in fact feel like democracy. It did not feel massively efficient. It also didn’t feel particularly dignified. The main thing was that however impassioned the various speakers were (6 or 7 for Obama, 2 or 3 for Hillary), no one said anything that we hadn’t heard. The point was their conviction. A few people mentioned 9/11, a few more mentioned the war and health care, citing specific issues with the candidates’ plans, but almost everyone said “hope” or “change.” When one of my fellow undecideds—who, like me, would be happy to vote for either Clinton or Obama—got up and asked a pointed, specific question about how either candidate was going to deal with the imminent recession and the already-here foreclosure crisis, the very next speaker was an utterly sincere, well-spoken young guy who said he was voting for Obama because of one word, “hope.” (I remembered when Mr. Clinton captivated the democratic constituency with the same word in 1992, though it was capitalized in his case.) The next speaker said her was “fed up with politics as usual. I’ve been fed up since Kennedy was shot. I don’t want that to happen again. It’s up to us.”
You can’t argue with that kind of conviction. It dominated the room. And it won the day, handily. The initial tally in our precinct was Obama 179, Clinton 34, undecided 16. When it was explained that there would be no “undecided” delegates, it became clear that even though I remained uncertain, “voting” to declare that condition would be a futile and vain gesture. So I made a choice and changed my vote, as did most, if not all of my ambivalent confreres. I spoke to one of them and we agreed that even though it was frustrating not being able to settle on a candidate, neither one of us felt particularly enriched for the experience of feeling like we had to choose one before leaving the gym so that our presence there would count for something. But I’m pretty certain we were in the minority. While walking home, I heard a middle-aged woman panting into her cell phone, “I haven’t felt this kind of… exhilaration… since Kennedy was elected! I just can’t believe it!”
Yes, I think she can.
