My Crappy Saturday

Oh my God, Saturday was one of the most painful experiences of my life. My day started by arriving at a local high school for the Democratic Legislative Caucus around 9:45 am. Sign in was supposed to begin at 10:00, so I found a seat next to like the only people there under 50 and waited until they announced that sign in was beginning.

Eventually, I think at least a half hour later, once the entire cafeteria was filled with people, they announced that they would start dismissing by tables for sign in. I was sitting at the second or third table to be dismissed. When I entered to lobby area, the line was seriously like a 1/4 or a 1/2 mile long. It wound back and forth about 8 times through two large rooms, including an additional cafeteria! For those of you that have been to Disneyland, it was like that. Times a million.

Finally, I was able to sign in and went back to my table where, of course, it had been taken over by people after we had left to sign in! Luckily, I had left a bottle of water and my book at my seat so no one had stolen my place. And it was there I sat. For four hours. After two hours, my cell phone died from overuse. At one point, I was worried that I would finish my novel before anything happened. Eventually, they had "representatives" (and I use the term very loosely) spoke on behalf of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The Clinton girl just said a few words about Clinton policies and how the Clintons had fixed the country after the first Bush and are ready to do it again. The Obama fellow was another thing entirely. All he would talk about was anti-Clinton rhetoric. The Clinton followers started heckling him by demanding he discuss Obama instead of bashing Clinton. All we need were some rotten tomatoes to really get the mob mentality going.

So the caucus was supposed to end no later than 2 p.m. What's laughable is that when someone called my mom (who was an alternate), they told her that it would probably only last an hour or two!! When the clock hit 2, people started leaving in droves. Probably about 1/3 of the people left. We then *finally* got the final numbers and moved on. By this point it was about 2:30 p.m., and despite my passion for "my" candidate and really wanting to experience the process, I decided that if we hadn't at least split in to our groups (the clintons would vote for their delegates separately from the obamas voting for theirs) by 3:00, I was outta there. Then Larry, the man who had been running the caucus for the last 5 hours told us that he was actually the acting chairman and that we had to vote in a permanent chair. Someone in the group shouted out, "I nominate you!" and everyone around me agreed! I mean this is the guy whose been running it, albeit poorly, for the last five hours. Who else would we nominate? Let's just get this thing over!

Larry accepts the nomination and has to ask a few more times, per caucus rules, if anyone wants to nominate any one else. We all keep yelling, "NO!" until one stupid stupid STUPID woman decides she wants to nominate this random girl that no one has heard of. When this girl was asked if she would accept the nomination, she hadn't even been paying attention to what was going on and everything had to be explained to her. THEN, we had to VOTE! They insist on getting people to could votes and I tell my table that I just hope it doesn't take them four hours to count this vote (yep, always the comic).

First they ask for Larry votes. Obviously the majority of the people raise their hands. They take a preliminary count and then ask for votes for the other girl. I'm expecting that maybe four people will vote for her because we all just want things to go smoothly and get the hell out of there. Oh, I was so wrong. When they ask for votes for random-doesn't-know-what's-going-on girl, like 1/3 of the people raise their hands!!! I was so shocked at the absolute retardedness of everyone around me that I told my table, "This is f#cking ridiculous. I'm leaving." And I picked up my things and walked out mid-vote. I still am in complete shock at what a mockery that caucus was.

I'm totally bummed that I didn't continue on in the process but now I'm even more passionate the next time around in maybe participating more and making sure that what I experienced doesn't happen again to some one wanting to participate in our political system.