User:Hojimachong/Caucus Weekend

The following article is a personal account of my political adventures on February 8th and 9th. These two days took me to a huge Barack Obama rally in Seattle, and the Washington state Democratic caucuses in Mukilteo, Washington. Hopefully it will provide you with a better understanding of how these kinds of things (rallies, caucuses, etc.) work.

Friday
I first decided to go to the Barack Obama rally at the Key Arena to get out of school. Sure, I wanted to see my favorite candidate, but the thought of not sitting in a classroom was mighty appealing as well. I got to sleep in, and I woke up around 7:30. By 8:00, I was in the car with my mom and my friend Mark, as we sipped our just-bought Starbucks coffee. We got to downtown Seattle around 9:00 and parked at my mom's office building, no more than three minutes from the Space Needle (this might be a good time to mention that the Space Needle, the Seattle Center, and the Key Arena are all in an extremely close proximity, with plenty of walking paths and such).

Seeing as how the doors to the rally didn't open until 11:00, and Obama wasn't supposed to speak until noon, you can imagine my surprise at seeing a solid mass of bodies stretching back as far as the eye can see - 15,000 people were standing in this line. By the time we made our way to the back of the line, we had left the Seattle Center grounds and now stood on the street.

We found ourselves directly behind a nice young Canadian couple, who came from Vancouver. They told me that they were really involved in American politics, because our country has a huge sway on the rest of the world. We talked about several things, including the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Red Bull, and Billary. This is when I decided that gay couples are really fun to talk to.

The doors opened much sooner than expected, partly because there were now over 20,000 people standing in line. My mom had left earlier to pick up some food at the Metropolitan Market, and Mark had gone searching for a friend from school who was working at the event. Finding myself alone in line, I walked in and promply sat in the fourth row of the upper level of aisle 225. Mark called and told me that he had found his friend and now stood on the floor of the arena, not 30 feet from where the senator would be speaking. I hung up on him.

The building was filling up fast, so I took it upon myself to guard a seat for my mother. After a furious bout of texting, she told me that she would be there in 30 seconds. She found me just in time, as the seat was being eyed by several old ladies. Once our row was situated, I pulled out my phone and tried to get on RationalWiki, which for some dumb reason doesn't work on my cellphone (which completely sucks). I got angry and settled for the mediocrity of Politico.

There were 3,000 people who were denied entry to Key Arena, because every single seat in the entire freaking building was filled. Of course, being the trendy phone-internet user I am, found out that Barack was giving a speeck to these people outside the arena. This is why he didn't start his speech until after 1:00, but that's for later. To fill the time, the magic people who tell the Jumb-O-Tron what to display began playing Obama promotional videos in a loop. Whenever the picture of George Bush came up (in the segment about the Iraq War and how Hillary signed it), a very loud boo reverberated around the arena. I noticed that it happened every 6 minutes, 22 seconds, and began organizing a unified boo in my section.

It was also fun to watch the organizers hand out "OBAMA '08" signs to the people standing in the area immediately behind the stage. It was much funnier when the sign hander-outers emerged from the tunnels with homemade-looking signs. This backfired, as the green-and-blue "Vets 4 Obama" sign was being overenthusiastically wielded by a teenaged girl. This was fixed after her cringe-inducing display of sign-waving was shown on the Jumb-O-Tron. I, being an unimportant upper-level denizen, did not get a sign to hold. I am still bitter about this.

Eventually, Governor Greg Nickels stepped on to the stage, and was met with boos (I guess people really were tired of waiting for Obama). He gave a little intro speech, and then introduced congressman Adam Smith of our 9th congressional district. He then introduced governor Christine Gregoire (who, by the way, I have grown less fond of since her introduction of a bill to the state legislature which would authorize the use of drunk-driving checkpoints, where cops could check any car at the checkpoint, even if the driver and passengers didn't exhibit signs of drunkeness. Sorry, but I like my 4th amendment). She's still a very likeable person though, and she announced her endorsement of Obama - a big shock, since everybody had expected her to support Clinton. Unfortunately, our two senators (both female Democrats) support Clinton.

Obama came out soon after, and gave a speech that - though I had watched the Atlanta, New York, Chicago, and Iowa versions of this speech on YouTube - seemed very genuine and custom-tailored to Seattle. It was very nice to hear him point out his differences to Hillary.

After the speech I went to the Fischer Plaza across from the Space Needle and bought a Gyro sandwich and some coffee. I then went home and watched Scrubs Season 2 Disc 3.