He's going to have an piece in Friday's gina & krista round-robin but wanted to share somethings here.
1) The caucus ended up being a sign-in. It's still going on (and he's there still) but in terms of Hillary or Obama they "finally" broke into two lines in the high school cafeteria -- one for Hillary, one for Barack.
2) The lines were more or less even with "five" more on Hillary. "Five" because it may have been more. The Obama line was more or a less a straight one while the Hillary line had to snake around.
3) The Hillary line received no instructions about what to do. A blonde haired man went through the Obama line group by group to explain to them. No one could hear the blonde man before they broke up into two groups and once the groups were broken up into, he just worked the Obama line although he is allegedly the person in charge.
4) Dallas took photos with his cellphone that will run in his Friday piece so you will be able to see one reason the blonde haired man was 'working' the Obama line. Dallas has three pics of the man kissing his apparent girlfriend (three different times). Every now and then, he would make a motion of starting to go over to speak to the Hillary line (these are huge lines and Dallas has photos of those as well) but would usually push past ("PUSH," says Dallas) an old man ("any old man would do") rudely and head back over to his girlfriend to give more instruction to the Obama voters.
5) Dallas wants that included not because it's going to effect the total but because he's "ticked off" that someone supposedly there to work the caucus for the Democratic Party was fawning over one line and ignoring the other. ("Except when he twice pushed or knocked into an old man.")
6) What about John Edwards? He was on the ballot and someone attempted to ask the blonde haired man about that when he was dividing them up into groups. Either blondie didn't hear it or didn't care. The Edwards supporter ended up leaving after attempting to speak to blondie for fifteen minutes (blondie was busy with his girlfriend).
7) How many were on the ticket? Dallas didn't scan all the candidates for the presidential nomination. He filled in the oval for Hillary but he guesses all the candidates (including ones who dropped out early) were listed (Biden, Dodd, et al).
8) When you finally got to the front of the line, you signed for who you were in line for.
9) They were told (by a woman working the first table since Blondie never told them himself) that they would divide up delegates for precinct 1234 based on the signatures.
10) Barack supporters talked of being "torn" between Obama and Huckabee. This was especially true of one woman who discussed it with Dallas at length. She said she wasn't sure she could vote for a Democrat in the general election because of her religion (Pentecostal) but she knew her vote was "wasted" on Mike Huckabee so she and others (she pointed them out, there were six of them plus her) decided (that day, after 5:00 pm) to vote for Barack. She did not get the idea from talk radio, she cited her pastor as recommending it and said many in her congregation were doing the same.
11) A 20-something Obama supporting male stated he was a Republican and planned to vote for Obama in November but would vote Republican in all other races. When he shared that with Dallas, two men standing near by agreed they would be doing the same. Dallas asked them if they usually voted in the Democratic Party primary and the answer was no on all three. They stated they didn't like Hillary. How firm was their Obama vote? If John McCain was a "true conservative" by November, they might end up voting for him but from what they'd seen so far, they would "probably" vote for Obama.
There will be an indepth report in the gina & krista round-robin on the Texas turnout. Dallas is responsible for precinct 1234 in Dallas. Diane is doing another Dallas precinct. Billie's covering a Fort Worth precinct. AJ's covering Marshall, Texas (home of Bill Moyers) and Sheryl's covering a Tyler precinct. I don't know who's covering the following but there will be someone for San Antonio, two for El Paso, one for Chandler, one for Van, five for Houston, two for Palestine, one for Cedar Hill, one for Midlothian, one for Midland, two for Austin, one for Lubbuck, one for Laredo, one for Big Sandy, three for Longview, one for Kilgore and I'm blanking on the rest. But Gina and Krista have said they have 71 members who will be offering a report in the round-robin on their precinct vote.
So that's a teaser for Dallas' report Friday and it will contain photos. If you attended a Texas caucus and didn't sign up to do a report but would like to, e-mail Gina or Krista. Polly's Brew will cover Ohio and the other two states (Vermont and Rhode Island, I believe) will be covered in El Spirito.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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