Caucuses Are Bullshit, And So Am I
The first thing I do in the morning is check the news. I consume political analyses and thinkpieces recklessly, hoping that one will resonate with me. I can read about the fracturing of the parties or the polarization of the voters. I can find Very Serious People to tell me that politics is good and noble, and that delegating my needs and wants and dreams to a coterie of rich white men is the best and most American course of action I could ever take. Alternatively, if I like, I can listen to fiery radicals debate about whether we should hang the bastards or guillotine them, although nobody ever seems to have a plan to get at them in the first place. What I cannot find, however, is someone who will speak to the absurdity of politics on a deep and fundamental level.
I decided to caucus with the Democrats, as I’d missed my deadline to register as a Republican and caucus with them, much to the detriment of this article. Right now I’m living in my parents’ house, which is near a very ritzy gated community called Somerset. They have a little grocery store and daycare in there, so they never have to leave and interact with the plebs. I’ve also learned that there is another gate further in, now; maybe they finally realized I moved into the neighborhood. In any case, these were the people I was going to caucus with at Westergard Elementary School. On the day, I was the only black person in the building, as far as I could tell.
The whole thing was utterly absurd, from beginning to end. I got there at 10:30 and wandered into a room labeled with my precinct number, where there were a few people who didn’t acknowledge me in any way. I left and went back into the hall, where I got somebody who told me to go into the other hall to register. I got a form to change my registration, but by then a line had formed at the other end, so I waited over there. Then I went back into the first room, where I could finally begin waiting properly.
There was a corner for Hillary and a corner for Bernie, each with signs. This is actually how the caucus works, by the way; everyone goes into different corners based on their favored candidate, then they yell at each other to sway undecided voters. Bernie is the only major presidential candidate I’ve seen who manages to give the impression that he could potentially see me as an equal and doesn’t make me shiver with instinctive revulsion; on those grounds, I figured I might as well throw the guy a vote. Then came more interminable waiting, as we couldn’t get started until noon.
While I waited, I watched the people around me. The first thing I noticed was the stark age divide. I’m not a great judge of age, but I’d wager that everyone under 40 was a Bernie supporter. Over 40 was about a 60–40 split for Hillary. There was also an even gender split for Bernie, with around 75% of Hillary supporters being women. If I were a political pundit, I would write about 1000 words extrapolating to the rest of the state, if not the nation. Since I am not, I will disclose that these numbers mean nothing in a population sample of 43 people.
Finally, a man got up and said he was the temporary chair. He began by passing an envelope around for donations to the party and said the suggested donation was $60, which went over quite poorly. Then we had to elect a permanent chair and secretary, for some arcane procedural reason. The temporary chair ran for the permanent chair position unopposed and won. Somebody volunteered to be secretary, and we all voted to get on with it.
The results came back: 13 for Hillary, 29 for Bernie. One woman, apparently the designated Hillary advocate, tried to convince one of the Bernie supporters to come over, saying that we could make our vote matter. As we understood it, Hillary needed 14 votes to have two delegates as opposed to one. I toyed with the idea, just to see everyone’s reactions, but then she continued speaking. She said that free college was a pipe dream, which I had expected. She pointed the finger at for-profit colleges, which is an entirely fair point. However, she then said that the root of the problem was people getting loans and taking remedial classes, people who “shouldn’t even be going to college.”
There are excellent points to be made about college being the new high school, the classist devaluing of the trades, and the failures of the K-12 education system. This woman, however, did not care about any of them. I have met her before, wearing various faces and names. She wouldn’t dare air her true feelings except perhaps after one glass too many at her weekly book circle, relaxing after a sophisticated discussion of a novel with just a touch of abstract and unthreatening lesbianism. What she meant, of course, was that education is wasted on the poors and the darkies.
Nobody changed their vote, and as the Hillary advocate sat down, one woman told her that she had done her best. Another woman told her that millenials just wanted free things. I wondered if we were all such caricatures when it came to our passions.
In the end, the math had been done wrong. Hillary got 2 delegates anyway.
The now-permanent chair asked for us to choose our delegates. Two people stood up on the Bernie side, and then there was a pause. I don’t know whether I was motivated by boredom, the potential for amusement, or residual Fuck That One Asshole, but I stood up and volunteered to burn a day of my life. Some Bernie people cheered me, and said that I was doing them a service. Then, after a few more procedural details, we all dispersed.
There’s a common refrain that voting, especially in the primaries, makes you a better citizen and thus naturally a better person. Absolutely nothing I saw that day backed up this notion. I went, not out of any sense of patriotism, but rather because I simply didn’t value my time. If I were working, or sick, or an observant Jew, or a million other things — well, then that would make me one of the Uninformed Masses, to be regarded with scorn by the Party and their faithfuls.
I thought that by the time I reached the end of this article, I would have nailed down a point. Instead, all I seem to find is absurdity. I’ve never met any of these people before in my life. The caucus is said to be an exercise in community democracy, but when there is no community and thus no real democracy, nothing is left except a bizarre ritual, disdained by even its participants. Everyone else was as bored as I was, except when yelling at the other side. Everyone wanted to get things over with. Political commentators and party insiders alike are constantly wailing about the rise of a demagogue, seeming personally betrayed that voters have not conformed to their stereotypes and models; I see that even the most loyal participants are disaffected and disconnected from what we’re told is our most important duty. This is not sustainable. Something must give. I don’t claim to know what will happen next, but I do know that these fuckers will have brought it upon themselves.