An Experiment in Scotch

So yes­ter­day was pri­mary and cau­cus day here in Texas. As far back as I can remem­ber, the pri­maries never were par­tic­u­larly impor­tant in Texas because the can­di­dates had all pretty much been cho­sen by the time we had ours but this year was dif­fer­ent, at least for the Democ­rats. Because that wimp Fred Thomp­son dropped out and McCain was the de facto choice for the GOP, I decided to vote in the Demo­c­ra­tic pri­mary for the one I think is the lesser of two evils. K voted for her too.

Then last night, I left work late and decided that since this was prob­a­bly the only time in my polit­i­cal life that the cau­cus in Texas would be mean­ing­ful and worth see­ing that I would attend. I called K up and she decided to tag along as well. It was a fas­ci­nat­ing expe­ri­ence, one I’m glad I par­tic­i­pated in even if I wasn’t doing it with exactly the best inten­tions. We showed up at our polling place about 7:10 and they still had a line with about 100 peo­ple in it just for the pri­mary vot­ing. Because the cau­cus can’t start until every­one votes in the pri­mary, they put all of us (I esti­mated 4–500 and K thought maybe 200 but it was a lot regard­less) in the cafeteria.

There were peo­ple there of all types but the crowd was def­i­nitely pro-Obama. It wasn’t par­tic­u­larly well orga­nized but given the fact that the Demo­c­ra­tic party has prob­a­bly never had to run a cau­cus of this size, I think that can be for­given. In the end, it was about 9 before all the pri­mary vot­ers made it in and they lined us up to sign our names and cast our cau­cus vote. We didn’t stick around for the choos­ing of the del­e­gates which hap­pens after every­one has voted but I think if we would have, we could have been a del­e­gate to the county Demo­c­ra­tic con­ven­tion which might have been interesting.

Over­all, I was thrilled to see peo­ple turn out in the num­bers they did at 7:15 on a Tues­day to do some­thing they clearly believed in. We spoke with sev­eral peo­ple includ­ing one guy at length and it was obvi­ous I didn’t polit­i­cally agree with much of any­thing they did but it’s impor­tant that we live in a coun­try where this can hap­pen. No one got shot, there weren’t any bomb­ings and it was a very sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence. With all the talk of how our civil lib­er­ties have been so infringed over the past 8 years, it’s nice to see that really isn’t the case. We live in a won­der­ful coun­try where we have rights that are the envy of almost every­one else on the planet. Last night reminded me of that and for that, I’m thank­ful I participated.