Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington, baby

[rodeosweetheart]

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[JaneV2.0]

How was your caucus experience, bae?

[ApatheticNoMore]

Hillary is inevitable ... like death ... and about as welcome. But meanwhile like death, one takes what steps one can to avoid it!!!

I've often thought it was possible that Sander's could lose it all in California, that even though this state is too late to matter generally, it might this time. California is a winner take all state with a massive delegate count - if it breaks 51% for Hillary she would take the entire of California's delegates . And I don't think it is in the bag for Sanders at all (politics are often weird here - I often find SoCal a completely apolitical place except for ethnic issues which aren't perceived as Sanders strength, even though there's nothing wrong with him). I hope the Sanders folks are concentrating here. I'm not sure how many there are but mostly to win I think independents (decline to state a party) voters need to be made aware they can take a Democratic ballot and vote Sanders. This is kind of confusing as the Republicans are not allowing them to take a Republican ballot but the Dems are (they probably wouldn't if they had the foresight to foresee Sanders, but hey they didn't, and so too bad, so sad, that's the law).

[bae]

How was your caucus experience, bae?

It was a bit disappointing, compared to my previous caucus participation, frankly.

The organizers anticipated 250 people or so. 750 showed up. The space was way too small, resulting in people packed elbow-to-elbow until that got sorted out, which took rather a while. They ended up breaking us out of the middle/high school cafeteria into the cafeteria, both gyms, and the library.

At no time during the first portion of the caucus was the process and timeline explained to anybody. Combined with a great push to get people to pre-register and print out their registration form and "ballot" ahead of time, this resulted in most people arriving, milling around, elbowing their way to the table for the precinct, handing in their piece of paper, and leaving.

So basically, for most people, it was a loud, crowded event to take an hour to hand in a vote, in an uncontrolled and unsecure fashion.

After 95%+ of the people left, it became a more traditional-style caucus and a vote-counting effort for all the handed-in ballots. There wasn't much in the way of platform or candidate discussion, it was simply some chatting to see who would get selected as delegates for the next level of fun.

So it was more vestigial than the caucus the Republicans hold here, then again, they have 1-200 people show up, they have a space that holds 2-3x that if need be, and they have a real primary election as well, so the caucus is more devoted to selecting delegates (from more candidates) and platform hammering-out.

It was very nice to see such a large portion of the community show up though - 3500 year-round residents on the island of all ages, 60% are Democrats, so that's 2100 Democrats aged 0->120, figure not all of those are voting age, so 750 showing up, along with ~200 "absentee ballots" is pretty good.

There were some complaints that the Hillary supporters had sent out pre-filled "absentee ballots" for Hillary disguised as pre-registration forms, and indeed a large portion of the absentee ballots were for Hillary, while the overall count was 78% Sanders, 22% Hillary.

There were also some articles in the local newspaper by Hillary supporters ahead of time indicating that they feared violence at the caucus. I saw no signs of violence, even though people were jammed together tightly and hot and noisy.

I had concerns that the scheduling of this process disenfranchised many of the younger members of the community with families - it overlapped the yearly heavily-attended Easter Egg hunt in the park here, and as I was driving into the village to caucus I saw 60-70 cars passing me the other way towards the park, most of them with parents and kids. Given my discussions with people in this age range here, they tend to be Sanders supporters, so there's a bit of bias there. The caucus could easily have been scheduled to start a couple of hours later without interfering with any other event happening that day.

There was a *lot* of grumbling about the whole process, and a desire to move to something more "democratic" - by which people I think meant voting in an actual primary. Not sure that would fix the problems underlying the system.

There was also discussion of the fact that the majority of WA State's Democratic superdelegates declared for Hillary last year sometime, making people question why they were bothering to participate at all...

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-...sidential-run/

[ApatheticNoMore]

Are you sure about that primary info? I have two sources right now that are saying California is a proportional delegate, not a winner take all primary

you may be right, I based it on a New York Times election schedule that said this. But they seemed to have changed it. That's what you get for trusting the New York Times, I suppose .... grumble. I predict Hilary wins California but even if not close 60-40 for Hillary, Sanders will pick up delegates if it's proportional but it's proportional by congressional district which is confusing.

[bae]

My local congressman, Rick Larsen, is continuing to take the heat for his announcement last year, as one of our superdelegates, that he will be casting his delegate vote for Clinton. His congressional district voted 70-80% Bernie, as did the entire State. His attempt to deflect yesterday with a jeremiad against Citizen's United, and how important it was to get Big Money Out Of Politics went down in flames, as it was pointed out within minutes with glee by local press that Rick gets most of his money from those sources, and his establishment presidential candidate has her snout pretty firmly planted in that same feed-trough.

Our local Democrats, at least at the citizen level, are waking up to how undemocratic and rigged the process is in this state. I see parallels to what I observed at our Republican caucus/convention activity here - lots of new, energetic, excited participants being driven away by Those Who Grasp At The Levers Of Power. In the case of the Republicans, they passed additional procedural rules to make it even tougher for real grass-roots participation. As a result, I saw many of those same younger faces this year at the Democrat activity, advocating for Bernie. I fear the other half lined up behind Trump, simply to stick it to the establishment forces trying to run the party.

I wonder how much longer this two-party-run-by-insiders system will continue in the US? The ability of the general population to find information, self-organize, and express their discontent is considerably higher than it was even four years ago, and it's only getting better. Will we have our own Arab Spring at some point, and demand truly representative and responsive government?

[bae]

Really interesting.
Cannot believe that Larsen is going to vote against his district that way.

He's sold out over the past few years.

I had been a supporter of his for a long time, even though I was technically a Republican. He always responded back to people here about their concerns quickly, and generally provided reasoned and helpful replies.

Somewhere he lost his way, and became part of the DC Machine. Letters back from him now are late, if ever, received, and generally are form letters, with fund-raising attachments. He mouths pretty words, then votes against the interests of his constituents. This sea-change in his attitude came about the time of our last redistricting, which was gerrymandered to give him a completely safe seat, before he had some minor competition, and he had to care about us.

[JaneV2.0]

...

I wonder how much longer this two-party-run-by-insiders system will continue in the US? The ability of the general population to find information, self-organize, and express their discontent is considerably higher than it was even four years ago, and it's only getting better. Will we have our own Arab Spring at some point, and demand truly representative and responsive government?

Libertarian blogger Tom Naughton writes about the "wisdom of crowds"--in this age of easily accessible information and social media we can do an end run around those Naughton refers to as "the anointed." I don't often agree with him, but feel he's absolutely right about this. I'd like to experience a peaceful revolution too.

[ToomuchStuff]

Bae, sounds quite similar to the ruckus a few years back, when people learned that in some states, the person who does the electoral college vote, was not obligated to vote how their state told them to vote. Then several states changed that law.
If he is still a legal resident (believe that is a requirement to represent you), then maybe you should pass a law to make him vote how the majority of your citizens do.

[bae]

If he is still a legal resident (believe that is a requirement to represent you), then maybe you should pass a law to make him vote how the majority of your citizens do.

Well, keep in mind this whole "superdelegate" thing is a Democratic Party procedure, it has nothing to do with Federal or State election law. I don't think the State of Washington could pass a law concerning the Party's internal procedures, any more than it could pass a law requiring *real* coffee to be served at these events.

I've often wondered how these private political clubs (the Democrats and the Republicans) manage to use the state/county's resources for running their primary elections, in states that hold primaries for this sort of thing. Do they have to pay for the election services?

I know that when any of the local governmental organizations I serve with need to pass a ballot measure, we have to pay election costs to the County Auditor for the services.