WSMom
My thoughts on the local district caucus:
I was forewarned and prepared for a day of sitting and waiting and then waiting some more, but I was impressed with how organized the process was and with the competence of the many volunteers. It helped too that Jim McDermott brought us all food. I found Dow Constantine to be surprisingly charming.
Perhaps it was where I was sitting, but I did not get the impression that the “booing” of the Obama speaker was very significant. I was impressed with the speech by the woman Clinton supporter. She was prepared and factual. She only spoke about Clinton’s strong points and did not denigrate Obama. The room was quiet and listened respectfully. Given that 75% of the room was for Obama, I would have been embarrassed if anyone had interrupted her (it would have felt bullyish). Now the Obama speaker was a nice young man, but my impression was that his speech was not very well prepared and he didn’t provide (to my recollection) many specifics. He seemed to speak more about emotions and what Obama will do than facts about what he has done. I did hear a person yell out “but how is he going to do that?” which was a question I thought the speaker should have been able to answer. He also said something negative about Sen. Clinton that made me cringe. Frankly, I thought that if the Obama speaker’s speech had been better prepared and if he’d stayed under the 5 minute rule, no one would have yelled anything out at him. Please note that these are my general impressions, I didn’t take notes and I actually wasn’t intending to write this post (but given Charla’s question above I thought I should.)
I was very impressed with the passion of the delegates who wanted to go on to Spokane and then Denver. One delegate, Robert Fuentes, spent five minutes with me explaining why he believes in Barak Obama. He brought tears to my eyes and reaffirmed, yet again, my decision to cast my vote for Sen. Obama. YES WE CAN!!