Confessions of an Iowa Caucus Participant

Well, the caucuses are over and the mainstream media are calling it a tie.  Both sides are claiming victory, but Bernie's claim has more credibility.  When Bernie came to Iowa, Hillary was 50 points ahead, had more money than God, and had the public backing of every establishment Democrat.  To come from behind and force a tie is quite a victory.  And when you consider that Hillary's stock has gone nowhere but down since October, while Bernie's has only gone up, it's clear that if the caucuses had come a few week later he would have won decisively. The mood is quite jubilant among Bernie supporters.   Keep in mind that although many of Hillary's supporters, (mostly middle-aged women)  are supporting her just because she is female, I don't think any Democrats oppose her for that reason.

  Every Bernie Sanders Democrat I know, (myself included) was an Elizabeth Warren supporter before becoming a Sanders supporter. We only signed onto Bernie's campaign when we failed to persuade Elizabeth to run. Gender has nothing to do with it. And, unlike our Republican friends, we do not actually dislike Hillary. Actually, she is a cool headed, intelligent woman, who shows considerable grace under fire. ( I remember during the Bill Clinton sex scandal she was on TV, and asked how she felt about it. She said, "Bill was always a hard dog to keep on the porch. I knew that when I married him." ) Hey, that is a cool lady. But many of us feel that Clinton is so totally entangled with the present corrupt system that she couldn't really change the things that urgently need to be changed. The fact that she gets almost all her funding from billionaires illustrates this point. But Bernie comes to the game free of all these strings. He refuses pac money, and is financed by small contributions from over 2 million individual voters. Nobody owns Bernie. Young people are particularly attracted to Bernie, because they agree with him on two points: 1. Wall street is completely out of control, and this is wrecking our economy. 2. Congress is completely dysfunctional, because of the influence of the tons of money flooding into the campaign finance system, and this is wrecking our democracy. If you are over 50, you may assume that as bad as it is, the final collapse probably won't  happen in your lifetime. If you're under 40, you may not be so optimistic. But here is the real news from the Iowa Democratic Caucuses last night: To participate, you have to be a registered Democrat. If you're not, you have to fill out a form that registers you as such. Guess what? We ran out of forms. And so did all of the other caucus sites. The state party, in its wildest optimism, failed to anticipate the surge of interest from young people entering the process. Bernie said he wants a revolution and he's getting one. My wife  and I had a strange experience at the caucuses last night.  There were two Democratic precincts caucusing in the same room last night.  Our group moved out into the hallway to get away from the noise and confusion of the other group.  The other group, a more populous region, had 200 members, to award 7 delegates. We had only 5 people show up to elect one delegate.  (Last time we had 24).     One of our problems is that our area has no young people.  They have all fledged and flown, just like our daughter.   We had no young people----just me and my wife and two middle aged women who backed Hillary and a middle aged man who also did.  So our one delegate went to Hillary.   Interestingly, when it came to elect the actual delegate,  one of the women works for the county election office and can't become a party official.  And the other two Hillary supporters both work Saturday.  The county convention is on Saturday.   So my wife and I had to accept the job of going to the convention as Hillary supporters.  One of us will be the delegate and one will be the alternate  We will be honor bound to support Hillary for the first two ballots.  This is weird, but not unusual.   I don't think this would work in New Jersey, but it works in Iowa.  ("I could not love Bernie half so much, loved I not honor more.")