A friend who’s lived in Iowa a long time, and who was a precinct captain for Joe Biden last night, checked in this morning with a report on the caucus in her neighborhood.

. . . [T]here actually was a good bit of rejection of Hillary tonight, if you look at what was happening on the ground. People were literally working to deprive her of delegates. In my precinct, which was small (around 120), we had three delegates. [Ed. note: The precinct would select three delegates in all.] Obama had a large crowd and was obviously getting at least one delegate. Hillary’s group was next in size. The Biden, Richardson, Dodd, and Edwards groups (Edwards’ folks were surprisingly without a precinct captain) weren’t viable [Didn’t reach the 15 percent of caucusers required to move on to the next step in the process—Ed.] so coalesced into an “undecided” group, and I think many of them mainly just wanted to rob Hillary of any chance of getting another delegate. Some actually said so. (”Well, we need to do something to keep HER from getting anything.”) The undecided group was bigger than the Hillary group before it was all over. I don’t think I noticed ANYONE breaking for Hillary during the alignment period.

Something else interesting: Hillary’s groups were perceived as being quite nasty in not only our caucus but several others I’ve heard from. Some of her people broke in our caucus for the Obama group, and the Hillary crowd was yelling at them. Two little kids were there, and one girl said, “Why are those people yelling at my mommy?” The Obama precinct captain had to ask the precinct chair to ask the Hillary group to stop yelling. The alignment process was over, and they were still being obnoxious.

The Hillary precinct captain wasn’t a local, but an outsider who had gotten the gig just two days ago. She seemed perturbed that I wouldn’t let her take over one whole side of the library (in a jr. high). . . . When she got pushy, I just told her that “we have 6 candidates here and everybody needs some space. You can have the area up to here, and I’ll take the next section.”

In our calls in the past week, we’ve heard quite a bit of “anybody but Hillary” comments. And that’s among committed Democrats. Really, if she is nominated, the Dems won’t support her, and she’ll lose.

Apparently, some Edwards supporters broke to the Obama group just to spite the Hillary group. The pushiness of the Hillary captains probably didn’t help matters.
My friend, who started the campaign last summer as a strong Obama supporter, wouldn’t have switched to Biden or volunteered to serve as a precinct captain unless he was the real thing. That he got less than two percent of the vote was the biggest surprise of the caucuses to me. It was to Biden and his people, too, apparently:

I’m not so sure that the caucus system did not break tonight. My caucus was small and all went well. All the ones I’ve heard from doubled in size, meaning the big ones got 600-700 people. It was chaos. You can’t really caucus with that many people. The number of delegates is determined by how many have voted in the precinct in the past. What happens when the number doubles? You get a very high number threshold to be able to get a delegate. So the second tier were all effectively knocked out right away. The crowds were too big for the precinct captains to work and make deals. I think that if we had just voted, we would have had 10% go to Biden from my caucus, and a lot of similar numbers (or more) for him around the state. That’s not far under what McCain got. But the way it worked, it’s like winner take all or something.

A candidate getting 10-15% of the vote should not be registering in at 1-2%. I feel a little depressed this morning, not so much because my candidate lost, but because it feels like something is seriously wrong with our democracy here. If my candidate had lost fair and square and was actually pulling in only 1% of the vote, I’d think, “Fine. We gave it our best shot.” But Joe had momentum going into Thursday night—growing, passionate crowds, signing up 100 precinct captains in a single day—things like that. Two more weeks and he would have been at 20%, I’m sure of it, and with spending only $10 million in the state. And none of that is reflected in the final numbers. Biden deserved to go to NH, and the American people deserved to have someone of his caliber in the race. And Richardson should be showing up a lot stronger than he is, too. It’s also ridiculous that there are only a few days between IA and NH.

Anybody still want to argue that this obtuse system is better than a primary? Or that it isn’t undemocratic?

Some random observations of my own, not that you care, based on what I’ve read this morning: The number of independents indicating support for Obama is encouraging—he’s clearly better able to reach people who are not natural Democrats than either Hillary or Edwards. The number of people aged 17-29 who came out for him impresses me less—remember that the “youth vote” was supposed to make the difference for John Kerry in 2004 and it didn’t. As regular readers of this bilge might remember, I have been worried about Hillary’s negatives forever, and nothing I’ve read about last night makes me think they’re any less of a problem, or that the situation’s going to change. The Huffington Post column somebody mentioned in the comments makes a good point about Obama vs. Hillary, and the idea of looking forward versus looking back. The thought of refighting the Clinton-era battles, both in the campaign and for the next four years if Hillary somehow managed to win, is simply nauseating.

Let us know what you’re thinking.