Mercer Aquatic Center Caucus Was Disorganized

Caption: Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley at the Labor Day picnic at City Park, Iowa City, Iowa, September 2015. The night of the Iowa caucus, February 1, 2016, he suspended his campaign.

My husband Jim and I caucused at Mercer Aquatic Recreation Center (precinct 6 for Democrats in our part of SE Iowa City) on Feb. 1, 2016. Jim caucused for Hillary and I caucused for Martin O’Malley, who was not viable, so after a while, I switched to Bernie Sanders. There were 455 people in the room, so Martin needed 69 caucusers to be viable, and we didn’t even have 10 people for O’Malley. The Hillary people and Bernie people tried to take our one bleacher before people were even done coming through the line to register, but we didn’t let them take our bleacher, our little anchor in the wilderness. At least one of us, an elderly person, needed to sit down because of her bad hip. She was glad I refused to give up the bench, although it did disappear later when I wasn’t looking.

The final count was 228 caucusers for Bernie and 218 for Hillary, but I never heard or voted for the chairman or the delegates to the county convention. Last I heard, the precinct chair was looking for delegates among the stragglers in the hallway as we were all leaving. I certainly wasn’t interested in being a delegate after all the grief I got from the angry pro-Palestinian Democrats (all male) the last time I served. I don’t understand why I have to be pro-Palestinian to be a “real” Democrat. It’s nonsense.

I also don’t get why I got so much grief for caucusing for Hillary in 2008 instead of Obama, who became a big disappointment to a lot of progressives who expected more from him. I didn’t. I saw through Obama because of his shenanigans with Exelon Nuclear and his lies in Iowa about what happened with legislation that he tried to pass in Illinois and didn’t. I researched him thoroughly, including his $100,000 gazebo in a backwater known as a Chicago botanical garden, and knew he was less than the Messiah a lot of Kool-Aid drinkers thought he was. (Many still do.)

And then I saw through Hillary and knew that her ties to Wall Street would be a problem. I read everything I could find on Benghazi and I strongly suspect that she’s lying about whether special forces were available in time to save former Navy Seals Glen “Bub” Doherty and Tyrone “Rone” Woods before the attack was over. It was Obama’s call, but Hillary doesn’t need to cover for him, especially since the State Department has decided to reclassify some of the emails she received as Secretary of State as “top secret” after the fact.

So I was ready to vote for the most honest person in the race this time.

It took too long to get the Mercer Park caucus started. It didn’t help any that Democratic officials and voters made so many mistakes in registering, and so many folks had to be called back to correct their registrations. Then the precinct chair gave a long, rambling speech that tried our patience. Most people kept talking during her speech so I couldn’t hear it.

The count seemed to go well, but as the O’Malley group switched sides, except for at least one die-hard who refused to switch from O’Malley to either Bernie or Hillary, the count had to be redone at least once. I rescued one of the O’Malley supporters from two Hillary supporters who tried to “railroad” her, as she put it, into supporting Hillary.

I intervened and told her that Goldman-Sachs pays Hillary $225,000 for each speech she gives to their officers and investors and that she has given many of them. Goldman-Sachs and Citigroup have also donated a lot of money to her campaign, and that the only super-PAC supporting Bernie Sanders is the United Nurses, and he can’t legally prevent their support. They did it on their own and gave him a little over $2 million. I suppose he could have refused to take the money. Most of his campaign donations are from individuals and the average contribution is $27 per donor.

Hillary is not interested in reinstating Glass-Steagall, which prohibited commercial banks from engaging in the investment business until Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act enacted November 12, 1999, which repealed Glass-Steagall, signed in 1933 after the Great Depression to avoid another depression. Clinton’s repeal played no small part in the greatest recession since the Great Depression.

Bernie Sanders supports the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, as does Martin O’Malley, and is determined to break up the big banks on Wall Street that are “too big to fail and too big to jail.” (Former Attorney General Eric Holder could have prosecuted Wall Street criminal actions but declined to. He fined them instead and then went back to his job as a Wall Street white-collar attorney.)

Hillary takes Wall Street bankers’ money but claims independence from them. That’s not a very convincing claim, in my opinion, especially when you consider her laissez-faire relationship with Wall Street during her career in the U.S. Senate.

I brought the embattled O’Malley supporter over to Bernie Sanders’ side of the room and she seemed happy to be there.