Travis County Democratic Convention

Today was our county convention and I was most proud and honored to be an Obama delegate. Here's a run down of how it all went.

Our precinct, #240, representing a lovely part of Northwest Austin, earned 22 delegates to take to the county convention (14 Obama delegates and 8 Clinton). As it turned out, only 10 Obamaniacs and 6 Clintonistas made it to the festivities.

It was held at the Travis County Expo Center which is tailor-made for rodeos but was a distastrous location for an event whose very nature requires different lines for lots of different people. The line of cars to get in to the grounds was a couple of miles long. There was no organized assistance from the Party officials once people showed up and there were thousands upon thousands of paticipants.

The delegate sign in was scheduled to close at 10:00 this morning, but it was clear that the powers that be were completely unprepared for the number of participants in the Democratic caucuses earlier this month, and thus for the number of delegates that would attend the convention, so the sign in continued 'til about 12:30.

By random chance, I ended up pulling in the parking space next to our precinct secretary, so we made the long hike to the arena together and got in the hundreds-deep line for credentialing. After about 20 minutes, Pete realized we were in the wrong line. He discovered that the line we needed to be in had about 20 people in it, so once we found out where we needed to be, we got credentials in just a few minutes. Pete went in to look for the couple of people who signed in ahead of us and I went out to patrol the lines to look for our missing Obama folks. I found four of them and got them out of the 500 deep alternate delegate sign-in line and got them to our short one. It was a great relief to get them through; they would've been out there for hours. While I was trolling the lines, a woman heard me calling out "Precinct 240! Precinct 240!" She was a Clinton delegate and timidly said "I'm in 241." So I told her that she was in the alternate delegate sign-in line and that she would be stuck out there for hours, but I would take her to the right line. A woman next to her told her "It's a trick...He's an Obama supporter, he's trying to get you in the wrong line so you can't cast your ballot for state delegate." The first woman looked me up and down and turned her back on me. True story...oh, well.

Once everyone in our group was accounted for, we headed in to the arena to find our seats. The Clinton delegates from our precinct were already in their seats so we sorta grouped ourselves just adjacent to them. In the meantime, while folks struggled to get through the credentialling process outside, we were treated in the arena to a whole range of speakers. The first to take the stage was actor Sean Astin, a Clinton supporter, who made an impassioned plea that we all rally around the presidential candidate regardless of who that happens to be. He was going to hit 4 county conventions around the state to pump folks up. It was really cool to see Samwise Gamgee up close.

Before the speakers really got going, the arena recognized our fallen service memebers with a moment of silence. It is a truly amazing thing to be surrounded by 10,000 people and not hearing a sound. My fellow precint delegate Jack pointed out quite rightly that there are few things as powerful as silence. I'm a real sucker for things like this so I got all choked up. Next, we did the Pledge of Allegience and sang the National Anthem. By the time that was done I was a blubbery mess.

Congressman Lloyd Doggett was next speaker, followed by District 14 State Senator Kirk Watson, who gives a great speech. We also got to hear from Mark Strama and Eliot Naishtat and Valinda Bolton and Congressional candidate Larry Joe Doherty, who wasn't my choice but he gives a fiery speech. Mixed in were some other speakers that I missed 'cause I was gabbing with my fellow delegates.

Finally, about 12:45, we got the go ahead to conduct our precinct caucus to elect our one delegate to the state convention. Our Democratic precinct chairwoman was the Obama candidate. The Clinton folks nominated one of their own as well. The way it works is that everyone votes by show of hands. The candidate getting the most votes is the delegate to the state convention. The second place candidate is the alternate. So naturally the Obama candidate is the primary delegate, the Clinton delegate is the alternate. Once that task is done, everybody except the delegate-elect and the precinct secretary get to leave. We were apparently the first precinct to finish their caucus 'cause we were the only folks making our way to our cars at 1:15 when we finished up.

So much for nailing down that coffin lid

The last week or so it's become painfully evident that my enthusiasm for my candidate, and my distrust of his opponent, has clouded my judgement about how things would turn out in the March 4th primaries. Actually, more correctly, my hopes compelled me to believe the predictions of "experts" whose enthusiasm probably led them to believe the predictions of other "experts" to the point that we all end up conflating our desires with what would actually happen, despite what the reality on the ground may describe.