Thanks for your post and attendance.
I have always lived in a primary state and never attended a caucus. Since you sat on the sidelines and observed maybe you can answer a few questions for me.
You noted the young. Did these look like working youth or mama boy types that go home to mamas cooking? Or did they look homeless?My question is what type of people can donate hours of their time on the weekend to politics if they work and have a family?
The more that I have watched the caucuses, I have decided against them. This is not democracy IMO. This is none other than old fashioned, behind the door politics meaning to disinfanchise many people.
The Maine caucus win was O. 1800 to Clinton 1305. The figures may not be exactly right but close. New Hampshire a much smaller primary state had over 200,000 voting in the primary. The Alaska dem. caucus was 305 obama to ?Clinton 103. What a joke the caucus system is. Not even 500 people voted in the Alaska Dem primary, yet that is not even talked about or discussed.
The 500 in the AK primary were delegates, not voters. There were several thousand voters in Alaska.
I don’t know where you got your Maine numbers either. There were estimated to be over 40,000 votes, even when the weather was really horrible.
The Obama and Hillary Show is like a rock concert set up. The stage is set out in the "court", the lighting guys, sound guys brought along with them, the local politicians intro them, security, handlers, 20 year old clean cut, dark suit seemed in charge. Chairs set up, balcony seating, VIP seating. Media staging. First woman President, first black President.
The actual caucus is made up of the same local and state people that spend endless amounts of time volunteering as they always have. Those same people are the ones that have always worked long and hard on local, state committees, hold office, and have worked with these candidates before. Repubs caucus was mostly the older generation in attendance. Youth in attendance was just usually helping out a parent with set up. Cake and coffee in the cafeteria. Get the picture? Which one would you go to?
The youth for Obama were mostly clean cut, typical college look University students (not Berkley types), the students for Hillary were mostly young women, high-school students with moms, young girls with moms which the message seems geared at. Male and female college students were in over abundance to the Hillary and Obama shows. But locations gave way to college/university settings. Republicans were more high school gym settings. Maine by the way is 98% white. No big vote of color for Obama to depend on.
It is only one weekend. Those there were highlighted by Hillary were nurses, teachers, doctors for Hillary, vets all of 3 maybe in the crowd. It is handled as a town meeting where the audience can ask questions. Some had a message for her which fit her too perfectly into her repertoire which left me suspect, but clearly she is a good speaker, respectful crowd. I cringed a lot, but some of her emerging platform, I hate to say, I would agree with.
The vote in Maine is not like in Illinois, NY etc where everyone runs to vote. (R) does not and is more the opening act to build the momentum for the (D) which take another weekend and they do the play-vote thing on Sunday if you choose, most as you can see out of 1.2 mil are doing other things. Your delegates decide. It's all just a dress rehearsal for the real thing, the touch was the Obama/Hillary concert which would be like the semifinals of American Idol, same visual make up of crowd, big energy, different place. ;)
It's a Saturday afternoon couple hours of seeing that people do care about what the candidates and upcoming election. It's good that the youth do want to be involved. Guess that is what it is all about. I think the Republican party has already lost their touch with younger Americans. At least Romney could relate when it came to the Olympics, business leader, down to earth family of sons like one of the crowd. The rest all have an image problem in that respect. McCain might have pulled this crowd but he did not bother to appear, he sent Collins. The Republicans seem to TALK AT the audience, while the Democrats seem more TALK WITH towne hall in forum with audience participation. The latter gives off the demeanor, that they care.
Bush, however, always pulled a big crowd!!