Prometheus 6

no way i can get over there in time at this point, but if you do manage to get in i look forward to your report.

Organizers have closed the doors at Key Arena because it is filled to capacity.

r@d@r

Are you in Seattle? Where can I contact you?

I was there! I got in line at 8:45 am and was able to get a place standing on the floor of the arena.

As ptcruiser said, they had to close the doors. Key Arena holds 18,000 and there were around 3,000 in overflow areas. Obama stopped to speak to them before he came in to the arena.

The crowd was overwhelmingly young, but there were a good number of older people as well, of all ages. The crowd was predominately white (as Seattle's population is) but there were many African Americans there and some Asians.

If you have seen Obama's speeches before, you would have found this familiar, but the energy was incredible to see him in person. The crowd was really fired up!

I'm so glad I had this opportunity. I would not have missed it.

I just caucused for Obama in Snohomish Co. It was pretty cool. While the HRC campaigners had managed to plaster the interior of the auditorium with Hillary posters, the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of Obama. I'm not sure what the final delegate count was but it seemed to me that the sheer intensity of disgust with GWB's policies (including among recently ex-Republicans) was pushing caucus participation way up, and that push benefitted Obama.

I was a bit disappointed at how uninformed people tended to be about the positions of their respective candidates. I was debating a Hillary supporter, which one kind of does at these things, and she was far more hawkish than Hillary ever was. OTOH, we had a vocal supporter in the Obama group who clearly had Ron Paul as her first choice. As I like to say, most people find politics boooorrring! until it takes a dump in their living room.

This afternoon I went to the Democratic caucus that was being held at the public high school that is safely tucked away on the second floor of the colossal building that also hosts the food court at the Seattle Center. If I were a high school student I would love to have lunch five days a week in a place offering a variety of foods that seldom, if ever, are found in a school cafeteria. There is even a shop that makes fudge and salt water taffy.

The high school's rooms and public areas were not large enough to accommodate the turnout. There were not enough chairs and many of the attendees had to hold up a wall or park their fannies on the floor. I was lucky enough to find a chair but, unfortunately, it was near the the teacher's desk at the fornt of the classroom. When I sat down and proceeded to get comfortable all eyes turned on me. For a minute I thought I had moved back to a "T Group" exercise from the 1970s.

Apparently I had slipped into another dimension because the group decided that I should serve as the caucus chair. I agreed to do it because I was also the only person in the room with a copy of the rules for how the caucus was to be conducted. I actually did a good job of holding things together and moving the process along. Folks came up to me afterwards and thanked me and shook my hand. I had excellent help, too, from several other attendees who voluntered to serve as caucus secretary etc.

Our precinct was allocated eight delegates based on the number of registered Democrats in the precinct who turned out for the caucus. Obama won seven of the eight delegates. I was elected as a delegate to the state convention. None of this turned out the way I had planned but as my paternal grandmother used to say, "It's a mighty poor frog that won't praise its own pond." We had a good day.

PT...

How did the experience of hearing Obama speak compare to the experience of hearing JFK speak and how does Obama come across in person? 

Ubstu34,

I'm glad that you asked this question because I made a mistake. I did not hear John F. Kennedy speak. I was also not a teenager when he ran for president. My father and I had made plans to hear him the next time he came to San Francisco, which is where we lived, but, unfortunately, he was assassinated. I may be wrong but I do recall that he was planning to come to San Francisco not long after visiting Dallas. I know my father and I were planning to go hear him whenever he came to town again. It would have meant the loss of a days' wages for my father but he and my mother didn't care.

I did, however, hear Robert Kennedy speak but I was nearly at the end of my teenage years by then. He was moving but not in the same sense as Obama. I love the way that Obama continually lays out the line-of-march, which is a brilliant tactic that tells his supporters where the campaign is going and it snatches any tactical advantage away from his opponents. Obama keeps raising the bar for his opponents and he does it by continually seeking higher ground.

The Kennedys, however, were much more inclined to use literary allusions or bits of poetry in their talks as a way to illuminate their positions. Robert Kennedy's impromtu and unrehearsed recitation of Aeschylus before a nearly all-black crowd in Cleveland upon receiving the news that Martin Luther King had been assassinated was a great political moment in our country. No politician today, not even Obama, would take that kind of risk of quoting a Greek playwright to an inner-city audience. Kennedy showed a tremendous amount of old fashioned respect for black folks that night. It still touches me.

I also remember exactly where I was when he was shot. I was watching the election returns on television. I went into my parents' bedroom and woke them up. They got up immediately and joined me in the family room. They had voted for Robert Kennedy in the California primary that day. It was a sad, sad night. My father did not go back to bed and he worked as a welder in the shipyard. I can recall where I was when I heard that his brother John and, much later, Dr. King was killed.

By the time, I finished my errands and tasks here at home and got ready to walk one block to hear Obama it was too late. The Key Arena was filled to capacity and the doors had been closed. I did go up on the roof of my building earlier that morning and took photos of the people in line. If I could figure out how to post one or two of them here I will.

Turnout was incredibly high in my area. The caucus started at 1 pm and the sign-in (the actual vote) was supposed to start at 1:30 pm, but at that time, there was still a line going down the hall and outside the building (we were in a school cafeteria).

In 2004, my precinct had four voters - this year we had 16. Obama got 12 votes to Clinton's 4. We had five delegates, so they went 4 for Obama and 1 for Clinton. At the site (there were about a dozen precincts), it was 66 delegates for Obama and 24 for Clinton.

The area where I live is not very politically engaged, usually, and I was completely blown away by how many people turned out. For a caucus! African-American turnout was very high, and there were a lot of young people as well. In my own precinct, the Obama voters included 6 African-Americans, a Native American, and a 75 year old disabled white woman who came with her multiracial grandson plus myself (white Muslim convert) and several other white people in their 20s or 30s. The Clinton supporters were three white women and a white man. Interestingly, the three women left as soon as they could and the guy only stayed because he was a delegate and he left as soon as possible after that. Most of the Obama supporters stayed on to see how it went and to talk.

Because I was the only one who knew what to do (only one other person had caucused before) I ended up as the caucus chair and I am also an Obama delegate (the other Obama delegates are a young African-American woman, and the older woman and her grandson).

It was an incredible experience and something I never thought would happen in my area. When I got home, I saw reports on a lot of blogs from the Seattle area that were just like mine - huge turnout and Obama landslides. But this is such a solid blue area it wasn't entirely surprising. Then the first results started coming in from counties in rural eastern Washington and they were all the same as us! Apparently they are just like the people across the border in Idaho.

It is amazing to me how Obama could win so overwhelmingly in both parts of this state, the deepest blue and the deepest red at the same time.

BTW, the Republican caucus results are a hoot. Ron Paul got 21%, which is not surprising if you know this state. Mitt Romney got 17% even though he dropped out earlier this week - and this is a caucus, there is no ballot and no early mail-in vote. Uncommitted got 13%. And then there is Huckabee with 24% to McCain's 26%. The state Republican party is much more dominated by the religious right than many people imagine (my mother is a solid conservative but she hates the state party because of the hard right positions it takes). Clearly, Republicans here were Anybody But McCain (74% voted against the presumptive nominee), but they could not decide who to support instead of him. Crazy!

who posted on their experiences. I really love reading about them. Anything for more participation.