Caucus Race

Last night I attended my first political meeting ever. Well, not the first ever. I did go to a Democratic Party dinner/rally thing once because Bruce had to go video-tape it, and so we got free tickets for the dinner. The dinner was good; I don't remember much else about it.

I heard recently that by the time we get to the polls to vote it's too late for us to make a difference; the preliminary preliminaries are the place to be. So Bruce and I went to the caucuses.

The first thing I ever learned about a caucus was from Alice in Wonderland:

" 'What is a Caucus-race?' said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

`Why,' said the Dodo, `the best way to explain it is to do it.' (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (`the exact shape doesn't matter,' it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no `One, two, three, and away,' but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out `The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, `But who has won?'

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, `everybody has won, OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO and all must have prizes.' "

Lewis Carroll's political commentary here is quite funny.

But our caucus wasn't run by a Dodo, it was run by a good friend of ours. And we did manage to be pretty orderly about it, on the whole. I believe we chose some good county and state delegates for our precinct. I believe I have done my civic duty for now. I don't believe that I'll ever be super involved in politics. But it was an interesting experience.