I attended my precinct caucus Saturday morning. Characteristically the precinct caucuses consisted of anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen people, and many of them met in private homes. But expecting a larger than usual crowd (judging from the number of hits on the caucus-finder on the Democratic Party's website), they decided to hold several of the precinct caucuses in the cafeteria of the Lowell School, about two blocks from where I live. They scheduled the sign-in for 10:00 a.m. with the caucuses actually beginning at 10:30. But by 10:30 there was still a long line outside the school building waiting to sign in, so we got off the a late start. But by the time everybody was signed in, there was standing room only. Once they got their act together (being pretty flummoxed by the size of the crowd), they decided they had to spread out through the school. My precinct caucused out in the hall, along with four others. Historically, I heard that the precinct 2017 caucus usually consisted of about a dozen people. But there were fifty-seven! The same story held true for the other precincts. They all drew many more people than they normally did, and most of these folks were attending a precinct caucus for the first time.

The precinct caucuses statewide in Washington State normally draw a total of 20,000. Because of such things as the hit-count on their website, the Party figured there might be as many as 100,000. They were half right. The actually count was 200,000. Ten times the usual number of people.

The results:

Kerry — 49%
Dean — 30%
Kucinich — 8%
Edwards — 7%
Clark — 3%
Sharpton — <1%>

Here's the story:   And a good morning to you, Mr. Bush!

Don Firth