The Morning After

Well, so much for all of that. There were nearly 600 people at my caucus, well over the 200 or so who were there four years ago.

Sadly, my guy (Biden) was not viable so I had to make an agonizing decision about what to do next. My heart was with Obama, but my head knew this one fact: There is no dirt left for the Republicans to dig up on Hillary Clinton. But Obama? He's still relatively unknown and they could, as one of my neighbors said last night, slice him into hash during a general election.

Plus, I'm worried that he'll get elected and pull a Jimmy Carter "El Foldo." That he won't be up to the task. Whatever other complaints I have about Clinton, I KNOW she can do the job. So I leaned toward Clinton, except for one other thing: The annoying precinct captain who was there working the floor on her behalf.

I had three complaints:

1. her bullying tactics. The assumption at a caucus is that people arrive with a game plan in hand, and campaign representatives don't start wooing people until after the first division. Then, if a candidate isn't viable, candidate reps can start trying to persuade the non-viables to join their camp. Not this woman. She was in people's faces before they even got in the door. And she was loud. So loud, that I discovered, by over-hearing her hectoring a young kid.....

2. .... that she wasn't even an Iowan! She was a New Yorker. Which means she shouldn't have been serving as a precinct captain and she was supposed to leave the floor and stand in the observers' corner.

3. She kept referring to "the Clintons." In the plural. I got news for her: only one Clinton is running for office. So thanks to this loud out-of-stater, I am wondering what kind of campaign Hillary Clinton is really running. Worrisome. But in the end, my two fears (see above) won out and I stood for Clinton.

Which, in the bright light of the sunny winter morning, I now regret. But whaddya gonna do? I am also sad that a decent, honorable man like Joe Biden never stood a chance. It's baffling. On the other hand, it was nice to know that there WERE so many great choices. So it's on to New Hampshire, and may John McCain win there. Seriously. Huckabee's been scaring the shit out of me since he first moved on to my radar last July.

With those dimples and doe-eyes, and "aw shucks" charm, he could easily win a general election. Now THAT is a scary proposition!