We caucus on Super Duper Tuesday, February 5. This will be my second caucus, and the second time I've caucused for John Edwards. I'm very excited about it, and would welcome any input any of you Kossaks have about how I can be most effective. More below the fold...
While Iowa and some other caucus states gather at the precinct level, we caucus in Idaho by county. As the only "blue" county in "red" Idaho (though in my opinion things are looking purpler by the day...) we have a sizable proportion of Democrats here and are therefore expecting 500-700 people at our caucus. Republicans, in case you are interested, do not caucus in Idaho. They will have a primary in May. Incidentally, Idaho Democrats have a history of crossing over to the Republican ballot and trying to help them nominate the biggest mouthbreather of the bunch, hoping the electorate will see sense in November and choose our always qualified, generally moderate candidate, but that has almost always backfired. But I digress.
This election cycle brings a major difference for Idahoans. For the first time in recent memory, we will be helping to choose the nominee. In past years, we have had late primaries, long after the nominee had been decided. The debate at our last caucus mostly centered around whether we should show a vote of confidence for our neighbor John Kerry by giving him all our delegates or enter a protest vote by sending a couple of them to someone else. We in the minority managed to get together and send a couple to Edwards, but by then it didn't make any difference.
At our monthly democrats meeting last week, we had a mock caucus (mockus?) where we practiced the process, as most people here do not have caucusing in their blood like Iowans. Had that event been an actual caucus, we would have given 9 delegates to Obama and 2 to Edwards. (These are delegates to the state convention.) Hillary was not viable in our little circle. (To be viable, a candidate must get 15% of the votes of those present at the caucus. In our mockus, that was 5 votes, and I think she got 3.) The Obama folks are very organized, and had signs and buttons and a paid organizer there, even at the dry run. So we've got our work cut out for us.
I'd love to have some input from the rest of the community about things that you have found effective--talking points, statistics, what have you--that will help our Edwards contingent convince undecided caucusgoers to join us in our corner of the room. I will also most likely be making a speech (!) so please keep me in your thoughts as I step out on this limb!
Thanks!