My inbox this morning was full to the brim with notes from people sharing election results. The typical email started off with, “I’m so sorry, but it looks like Hillary won Texas…”
I’m sorry, too.
But sadness about the Texas primary results isn’t the overriding emotion this morning. What I feel, rather, is a tremendous and uplifting sense of community.
I talked to hundreds of people in my precinct yesterday — so many that my voice is gone this morning. There were old people and young, of every imaginable ethnicity. I saw friends I hadn’t bumped into for years, others that I see daily, and still more that I’d never met before… and most of them were coming out for the senator from Illinois.
No, not everyone with whom I spoke was voting in the Democratic primary, nor was everyone supporting Obama. Of those who were, though, only two told me they were there to vote against Hillary… and those two didn’t come back to caucus. Negative energy and Obama support were mutually exclusive here.
Although our precinct spent over an hour in line outside waiting to get in to caucus (as evidently happened elsewhere, too), there was no evident hostility between the two campaigns’ supporters. Since I didn’t meet anyone who’d ever caucused before, I had the feeling that the sheer novelty of the experience superseded candidate choice.
In short, my experiences yesterday taught me that my neighbors and I have rather a lot in common — far more than I’d suspected, and far less than with other parts of Texas — and that’s very comforting.
Hillary Clinton didn’t win in Fort Bend County. In my area, Democrats outvoted Republicans 2 to 1, and Barack Obama won the popular vote by an enormous margin: 63% to Hillary’s 37%. Not only that, but if my precinct is at all typical, those numbers are going to carry into the caucus results, too.
We had 140 people for Obama vs. 83 for Clinton last night… and while there were certainly precincts that had larger turnouts, it was astounding for ours (where I’m told the typical turnout is about 4).
So to those of you who sent emails — yes, I’m disappointed… but when all is said and done, there’s a lot to be said for discovering that my neighbors and I share more than a zipcode.
The silver lining
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I caucused for the first time last night with the dems, after voting for obama, motivated by my strong dislike for both hillary and mccain. i think it is likely obama will be terrible, but i think he is least worst. perhaps he will not seek mindlessly to implement the typical dem program (which now must really be acknowledged as the bipartisan brain-dead program) of raiding the federal treasury to cement the loyalty of constituencies.
116 people showed for the caucus, 60 for hillary and 56 for obama, resulting in eight delegates each.
i do not wish election as president in 2008 on my worst enemy. we’re going to have a rather trying economic experience, and the president will be expected to Do Something, but the president is really mostly powerless to do much about it except spin, cheerlead, lie, and give the appearance of Things Being Done. you would guess that the president who is elected in 2008 in doomed to one term. however, roosevelt won re-election until his death, despite the fact that his highly strenuous efforts resulted in little economic progress.
Hi Enrico, thank you for your comment.
I’m sorry you are so unhappy with the candidates this year, but I have to admit that I know quite a few people who feel the same way.
I agree, btw, about the president’s relative inability to Do Something. There are areas where the executive branch has power — primarily foreign policy / Supreme Court appointments — but legislatively speaking, it’s mostly a bully pit. I think lots of folks are over-investing hopes in what they can reasonably expect.
BTW — where did you caucus? (What part of the state?)
Bunker Hill Village, precinct 440. there were a lot of women of a certain age who were pretty jazzed up about hillary.
Hi Enrico — sorry to be slow responding. Left town Thursday and didn’t have time to get back to the blog.
Fascinating that you had more Clinton than Obama there, and that there were many “women of a certain age”. Out here (Cinco Ranch), though I didn’t mention it in the post, I’d say the Obama group ran about 50-50, while the Clinton group was probably a bit tilted toward women.
One thing, though, that was interesting: the Clinton line of people were primarily “onesies”, in that folks came alone to caucus. The Obama line, otoh, was four or five people wide, and people came in groups — friends/family/neighbors.
All in all, I’d have to say that the energy in the Obama line was rather a lot higher, too.