Impulse

It’s offi­cial: I’ve decided to sup­port Obama in the upcom­ing elec­tion.  More than that: I’m a del­e­gate! I’ll be going to the county cau­cus to turn in my vote and choose a state con­ven­tion del­e­gate (I’d love to go to the state con­ven­tion, but I’m booked to shoot a wed­ding that day).  By my math, my del­e­gate vote rep­re­sents votes for 19.67 peo­ple in my neighborhood. 

The cau­cuses this after­noon were amaz­ing.  Record turnouts.  I hap­pened to drive from one end of Seattle (Ballard) to my house in Wallingford.  All along the way, I saw hun­dreds of peo­ple walk­ing to their polling places.  It was the great­est dis­play of com­mu­nity I’ve seen in years.  Yeah, I know it’s corny, but it made me feel all warm in side. 

At my polling sta­tion, a local church, the line to get in went around the cor­ner then down the block (see pic: this is the line in front of me to the cor­ner; the line behind me was longer).  They had to break us up and present to us in shifts.  Some precincts had to meet out­side because there wasn’t enough room inside the church. 

Our precinct had a dra­matic upset.  At first tally of votes, Obama won 4 del­e­gates, Clinton 1, and 1 went unde­cided since we had sev­eral unde­cided votes.  Then, a cou­ple made a pas­sion­ate speech in favor of Kucinich and chat­ted up the unde­cid­eds in our group.  Their strat­egy worked: by the final tally, Kucinich picked up the final vote (their logic: send a few Kucinich del­e­gates to the con­ven­tion to force the big 2 cam­paigns left by court­ing the Kucinich vote). 

Myself, I stuck with Obama through­out.  Though both Clinton & Obama are excel­lent can­di­dates, I think we need inclu­sive pol­i­tics more than divi­sive politics.

Related posts:

1. Hello, Senator Kerry
2. Yes we can Obama video
3. Hello President Barack Obama