Thoughts as the Train Rolls On

I was going to start with the sour-grapes part of this entry, but I'll leave that for the epilogue. The train is rolling out of Nevada, and I can't remember the last time I was this terrified.

Bartending might not have been rewarding work, but it was mostly comfortable. I didn't realize how miserable I was doing it until I got to do something that mattered. Thursday night, I got 3 hours of sleep. Over the week before that, I slept maybe 4 hours a night. Friday night, I never went to bed. I stayed up, printing maps, cutting supporter lists, optimizing spreadsheets. I went home and took a shower at 4am, and I was still the first person back in the office at 4:43. I've been fighting a cold for 10 days, I was hacking up a lung, but I was happy. I was doing something that I believed in, something that mattered. And I was doing it trusting that whether we got along, whether we agreed, everyone else was going to do it the right way when the day came, that everyone else was going to play a clean game.

The rest of my office is moving on. To New Mexico. To Arizona. To California, Tennessee, Colorado, Utah. And I'm looking around, wondering what in the name of god I'm going to do with myself. And praying they'll get the job done, so that I can start again soon. But it's strange to watch others go on to do something I believe in while I'm left here to find a way to pay my rent. So I'm praying they get the job done, praying the general comes soon.

And now for the sour-grapes portion of our program.

I was really looking forward to crying. Regardless of the outcome, I was due for a good, hard cry. Between the pressure, the exhaustion, the emotion, I just wanted that release. Joy or sorrow, I just wanted to cry. I never got to. Funny thing about anger is that it makes my tear ducts tighten down.

I won't speak to anything I didn't see with my own eyes. There are a lot of things I could speak about, but since I didn't see them firsthand, I won't. I will direct you to someone else's firsthand account, however. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/19/162953/644/790/439573

What I will tell you is that I saw with my own eyes, held in my hands, a "rulebook" printed, laminated and spiral bound by the Clinton campaign that instructed it's staff, volunteers and supporters to close the doors at caucus sites at 11:30am, and let no one else inside.

For those who maybe don't know the exact intricacies of the Nevada Caucus system's rules governing time, here's a quick breakdown. Doors open at 11. At 11:30, procedural activities begin. At 12 noon, doors close, and anyone who is not either a) inside or b) already waiting to register will not be allowed to enter and cast a vote.

I didn't see the booklet until after the caucuses ended, and someone brought a copy to our office that they had taken from a Clinton volunteer. I did wonder why, when I arrived at 10:30, there were already dozens of Clinton supporters inside. I did wonder why they were so eager to get people into the rooms. I did have to argue with a Clinton supporter who tried to close the doors at one caucus site at 11:30.

The problem is, there were a lot of problems. The state party had no real organization in place. In my region alone, there were 4 caucus locations and three went haywire. The site I monitored, there were 11 precincts meeting at the same location, with no indication of what precinct went to which room. 5 precincts met in the gym, initially without any indication of which part of the gym any one precinct should go to. When I asked the NDP rep to make signs, she scribbled precinct numbers on scratch paper, and taped them to the doors of the rooms. Another caucus location was still locked at 12 noon, with supporters of all campaigns standing outside while others across the state were voting. At a third, a high delegate precinct, there was no caucus chairperson to regulate, and my precinct captain called me almost in tears because she couldn't manage the shitstorm. Now, I absolutely will not claim that we alone were affected by this. Supporters of all campaigns were inconvenienced to the same level by this disorganization. However, as has been well documented, more of our supporters are new to the system, and therefore more likely to be disenfranchised by chaos. And while there was a level of chaos that caused problems for everyone, there was a level of intentional misdirection that is hard to understand. As I said before, I won't and can't speak to things I didn't witness, but I did see things that made me ask questions. I saw a man in a Clinton shirt send voters from one room to another. I knew one of the people he moved, and turned her back around. When I looked at the sheet, he was sending her from a precinct worth 8 delegates to one worth 2. It could have been an innocent mistake. And the spiral-bound, laminated, color printed rulebook may have been misprinted, or the rules misinterpreted. And it could have been a mistake when a Clinton volunteer told a registered independent that in order to re-register and vote for Obama he needed to go to our office (15 minutes from his caucus site) and get an Obama staffer's signature. Or, there could have been something else at play.

Interestingly, Obama dominated Northern Nevada. In most areas, it wasn't even close. I spoke to the organizers from the North, and the ones I spoke to said that things were well organized at their locations. They said that there were Chairpersons who were well trained to run the sites. There were signs and maps to direct people on where to go. There were enough voter registration forms (did I mention that we ran out of those in the South?), and they didn't run out of Presidential Preference cards (don't ask). And, where things ran smoothly, Obama won, and by a broad margin.

In the South, it was uncontrolled chaos. And something else happened. Now, I have to admit, Clinton turned out more people than any of us thought she would. And the Culinary 226, for all of it's vaunted power, failed to deliver the votes it claimed to carry. It's quite possible that, without any of the questionables, she would have won. That just makes the irregularities worse, in my opinion.

In her victory speech, Hillary Clinton declared that this was "how the West was won." The days we won the West were not our brightest. It wasn't a time we should be proud of, without reservation. Yes, people braved uncertainty of a million stripes to find better lives. They plowed fallow land, built new cities, and forged a new country. But we can't forget that United States Cavalry soldiers gave smallpox-infected blankets to Indian tribes. Men were strung up in town squares without the benefit of trial or appeal. Where there wasn't law, outlaws ruled, and at times the law was worse than the gangsters. As it happens, I'm one who idolizes the Wild West. I've ascribed to the romantic notion of the cowboy, the saloon, and the saddle. But having seen a little piece of anarchy, I have to wonder. And I have little doubt that, just like the blankets, just like the hangings, just like the gunslingers and the gangs, lawlessness and chaos were exactly how the West was Won, this time.