Caucusing With Cancer

The last radiation treatment was Friday -- they gave Diana her positioning face mask (flower basket? bird feeder? avant-garde sculpture?) and a 'Certificate of Completion.' We'll talk to Dr. C next week, and start tapering the steriods down. Then two to six weeks of sleep and she'll be starting to get back to normal. The PT talked about trying stairs next week -- that's what we need to get back to our home.

We both did the caucus Thursday -- you can part a pretty good-sized crowd with a wheelchair and a loud voice. We were in the City High Auditorium -- never a very good place to caucus, particularly with a wheelchair and more particularly with a crowd twice the size of four years ago. Still, we found a more-or-less handicapped-accessible parking space and with the incredible assistance of a City High teacher who was caucusing in the cafeteria next door, we got a space down in the front with the Edwards people.

They used a different procedure this year -- rather than clumping in groups and counting bodies, everybody got a 'preference card' -- a three by five card with a sequential number. They determined the total turnout by the number of cards handed out (541), and then you 'cast your vote' by giving your preference card to your candidate's precinct captain -- the organized campaigns have a designated precinct captain there, and the Kucinich people elect somebody on the spot. The photo shows the precinct captains for each candidate (the woman on the left represents the undecideds), as they are each announcing how many preliminary preference cards they have and making their pitch to attract switchers.

To be viable, you had to have 15% of the available preference cards -- that was 82 in our precinct this year. (Four years ago, I think it was more like 40.) Since we were so close to the Edwards folks, we first learned that Edwards had 153 cards. There was a gasp from the crowd as the Hillary person (at the podium in the photo) announced that they only had 73 cards. Obama had 209, which caused another gasp. Richardson had fifty-something, I think, and nobody else was over 30. After 30 minutes of politicking, Hillary found enough to get viable, and the Richardson people finally gave up finding enough and moved to one of the other three. Obama got three delegates, Edwards got two and Hillary got one. They'll go to a County Caucus and do it all over again to figure delegates to send to the state level. We split as soon as the delegates were divvied up, but hardcores and the inexperienced probably spent another hour at least debating individual platform planks.

We live in the People's Republic of Johnson County, and our votes are generally nowhere near representative of the rest of the state. Hillary did better in the rest of the state, but we were closer to norm than usual.

The Obama people seem like they've got a pretty good organization -- they turned out a lot of new caucusers and they arrived ready to lead them. His campaign is ready to go toe to toe with Clinton. Speaking for all Iowa caucusers, you're welcome, the rest of the country. We did our part to make the nomination race interesting.