Caucusing.

I would have taken pictures, but that would have annoyed the kids more.  They weren't too happy about being left in the lobby of the community center with nothing but a foosball table and a few dollars for the snack machine, even for the twenty minutes it took me to go in and cast a vote in the straw poll and second a nomination for the delegate to the next step.  I offered to bring the kids in with me so they could view democracy at work, but they preferred to argue about the merits of Pop Tarts vs. Famous Amos cookies (which my eleven-year-old, amusingly, pronounced as "famous ammo" cookies).

It was nothing -- nothing -- like 2008 in there.  In 2008, the caucus was standing-room-only packed, mostly with Ron Paul supporters.  This time, there were about a dozen tables, one for each precinct in the Senate district, and around each table were folding chairs -- as few as eight (mine) and as many as 25.  People sat and chatted amiably about candidates and issues.  I saw all ages represented, almost as many women as men, and (while I didn't stop to take a detailed census) it was a fairly racially diverse crowd as well.  Probably not quite as diverse as the neighborhood we all live in, but more than I had expected.  I got the impression that the younger people were skewed more toward Paul and the older people more toward Romney.

My precinct table only had eight people, but three of us were toting toddlers.   I thought that was interesting.

"What do you have to say?" the gray-ponytailed man next to me asked as I took my seat awkwardly, shifting the two-year-old in the sling.  I said I came more to listen than to talk, which was true.  Unfortunately, I had that thing going where I had three kids out in the next room and one kid wriggling on my lap.  I'm sitting here with my fingers on the keyboard trying to record here the comments I heard people articulating, and I just realized I can't reproduce them because, I think, my higher brain functions were all going to keep tabs on the kids.   I did form impressions, though.

Santorum:  respected, intelligent uncompromising, but not judged by my tablemates to be electable because of the perception of being too religious.  

Paul:  similar to Santorum in that he is principled and uncompromising, but judged by my tablemates to be more electable because his principles do not come quite so obviously from a religion.  

Romney:  part of the problem, emblematic of the broken system that is the collusion  of big government and big money; but could probably get the job done.

The fourth candidate might as well have been called "He Who Shall Not Be Named" because nobody even mentioned him.

Not that the table was uniform in its judgments -- there was one guy who steadfastly insisted that all the candidates were equally awful, and he wrote in "Arne Carlson" for his straw-poll vote.  

That is about as far as I got before I judged I had made the kids suffer enough (okay, before I heard the five-year-old wailing because she didn't have any bubble gum) and bowed out.  But I'm really glad I showed up.  One of these days I may actually offer to be the delegate -- I might have done it this time, but our family's going camping that weekend.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when it turned out that Santorum was such a clear winner in Minnesota.  I mean, I guess it makes some sense now that I think about it -- I mean, it's not like the character of the state as a whole is representatively reflected in the sample that is "people who actually show up to a party caucus."  The state as a whole tends to vote Democratic pretty reliably, and I'm in the center of the metro area, so I never expect any segment to lean conservative -- I reflexively expect to see moderate-to-left views most of the time, since that is what I am surrounded by.

UPDATE.  Here's a decent and probably-accurate summary of why it isn't that crazy that Santorum swept Minnesota.  I would just like to point out that Romney won the state's caucuses in 2008, though, when there were still more socially conservative candidates in the field, so it's not like they reliably yield the most conservative option.

Comments

[Deanna]

We had over 400 at our caucus. Also, Santorum may have been the clear winner via the straw poll, but it's the number of delegates that ultimately counts. I don't believe Santorium is leading in the arena.

[bearing]

You wouldn't know the distinction from trying to follow the MSM...