When I first heard this phrase, I was sitting at the desk in the UMC and the awesome New Era Colorado kids were arranging their materials in the glass display case across the hallway. “That’s foul,” a passerby said, laughing heartily. “But it’s still funny.”

I have been psyched about the caucuses since long before December 5. As a longtime Barack Obama follower, my position in support of Obama has only solidified in past months; Senator Clinton, bless her heart, has just not been able to win over my vote. Part of this is the fact that she could possibly continue the line of Clintons and Bushes to be in the White House during my entire lifetime. I just can’t stomach the thought.

However, tonight promised to give Hillary a run for her money. I headed up from Boulder this afternoon, Barack posters and voting rights information in tow, sitting in some grand traffic while blasting will.i.am’s “Yes We Can.”

Ah, delightful Diagonal driving.

Earlier this week, I was made a precinct co-captain for the Obama campaign and worked with a very nice older man in my precinct who was excited to have me on board.

It was a pleasant environment as soon as I arrived at my caucus location, which happened to be my old high school. I began handing out stickers and voters’ rights sheets right away. The voters’ rights sheets were gone within moments, and the stickers were very close to finished by the time we gathered by precinct in the cafeteria. A whopping 65 people turned out from my precinct, and roughly half a dozen precincts gathered at my location. I later heard that only twice that amount showed up at another location, with roughly the same amount of precincts assigned to the location. I am still not disappointed with my county’s turnout.

I volunteered to become the secretary while a former teacher’s son was committee head, working closely with his wife to distribute the appropriate information and organize the many papers involved in the process. Right off the bat, we had a few problems with the count as referenced with our precinct turnout sheet; it took almost three counts for one particular woman to let us know that she was not involved in the process and was merely attending with her husband. After that was solved, we came to a count of 65 people: 43 for Barack, 21 for Hillary and 1 uncommitted.

Left: Sean, our committee head, reads the caucus regulations. Right: finishing up the papers to send ‘em out.

Our precinct had been awarded 11 delegates (as decided by last year’s turnout), and we calculated 7 Obama delegates, 4 Hillary delegates and no delegates for the uncommitted person. As we went through our platform propositions, I gathered delegates (one of them being myself, hooray!) and alternates for the Obama side.

After heading home for a little while, I brought my brother with my to the post-caucus party at the Greeley Obama office. We spent roughly an hour mingling with fellow Obama fans, and even made a few new friends.

Left: our new little buddy. We wound this poor kid up with candy and goofing around until practically midnight!
Right: Obama cookie! Yum!

Overall, I am very pleased to have been part of the caucus process. I’m even more pleased to have become a delegate, and I have also applied towards becoming a state delegate. I’ve decided to work towards becoming a DNC delegate and am currently gathering supporters, such fellow precinct members (like a family friend, fellow Buffalo and 14-time-caucus-goer, Steve) and some journalists with whom I’ve kept contact regarding the DNC. I attend my county convention in a month and my calendar is already marked.

I now realize how much a part of my life this will be in the future. I will continue to caucus every election and hopefully gain more and more experience in the process. It is nothing but inspiring to see so many people turn out for a cause I once believed to be lost.

For me tonight, it wasn’t just “Rock out with your caucus out,” it was “BARACK out with your caucus out”!

Hillary Clinton

As I was watching the coverage of Hillary Clinton’s three-percentage-point victory over Barack Obama in today’s New Hampshire primary, I have to admit that I was not terribly impressed by the media’s insistence upon this being such a huge victory. In fact, some anchors, pundits and other politicos were ready to declare this one of the biggest upsets in history.

Although polling seemed to indicate that Obama would win by a rather notable margin, Hillary took a three-point victory over the Illinois senator as around 50% of the precincts had reported. Why I keep repeating this three-percentage-point difference should be rather clear; however, television media were incredibly excited to overlook this point and declare Hillary’s win as if it were some kind of slaughter. This was by far no huge victory for the admirable yet over-politicized, mechanized New York senator.

I’ve got to run a little disclaimer before I continue: it’s not that I hate Hillary. I was on the Hillary boat between the time she began indicating her candidacy for the Oval Office and more than weeks after Obama declared his candidacy. I believed that Obama’s limited experience in politics was a huge disadvantage and that Hillary was primed and ready for the presidency. I no longer view the experience issue in this manner, and I now truly believe that Obama’s fresh face is rather preferable compared to Hillary’s over-saturation in politics. As a fellow blogger pointed out to me through Twitter: shouldn’t we be concerned that two families will have run this country for the entire lifetime of a young generation?

And it’s not to say that I don’t miss Bill Clinton. Heck, any of those Democratic contenders are light years better than our current president, not to mention that I would support any of the Democratic contenders over any of the Republican candidates. And it’s not so much partisanship that drives me to this opinion; as my father said, “The Democrats’ problem is that all of the candidates are just so good. The Republicans’ problem is that all of the candidates are just so bad!” Even John McCain has lost a great deal of my admiration after asserting that bombing Iran has some degree of hilarity to it.

I’ll give the television journalists one thing: change is indeed the voters’ message this time around, and change is what the candidates are going to need to promote to carry a convincing campaign. But Hillary does not represent change; if anything, she represents the underlying fear of standing apart from the majority. Hillary has catered to the popular conveyed opinion; that is, she has made her political choices based on the media’s projections of what the American people want. In other words, she is complicit. In harsher words, she panders. It depends on your prerogative.

On a more basic and obvious level, in the line of what her critics have been saying, Hillary is too mechanized. She is steeped in institutionalized politics, something that is a far cry from the kind of change we need to revive the integrity once viewed as a quality essential to being the American president.

What I ultimately don’t believe is that Hillary is the answer to uniting our country. I don’t believe that her message carries the kind of optimism for our country embodied by Barack Obama. Nor do I believe that any of the Republican candidates even come close to inspiring hope for this country. And where Obama shows true promise for me is in that he has the potential to win this election while still being more viable than the other Democratic candidates who share his vision. As far as I’m concerned, Hillary is closer to being a Republican candidate in the spectrum of the entire field of contender because she lacks the appeal of being able to bring this extremely divided country any closer together. Her message is about promoting herself, as are the messages of virtually every single other viable, big-name candidate aside from Obama and Edwards. The change we need will begin with electing a president who draws voters by giving us a vision, not through “I-told-you-so” or “look-at-me” politics.

I do not want a candidate whose message is essentially self-promotion, nor does the vast majority of my generation. After seven years of severe incompetency, this is not about a single candidate’s whims and desires. This is not about the candidate who wants their name in the books.