So, Humboldt County has a population of around 14,000, and went about 70% for Romney. There are some Democrats and left-leaning to leftist independents around though, and we're pretty strong for Bernie. Our caucuses elected 53 Bernie delegates and 27 for the other Democratic candidate. I've never caucused before, nor have I attended a party convention, so what follows are my first impressions of the process.

First, the horse-race, 'cuz we all love the numbers: Humboldt County gets 11 delegates to the NV Democratic Party Convention. The 53-27 split means that coming out of the caucuses, Bernie was sitting at 7 state delegates. Well, we managed to get 51 Bernie supporters to attend, most were elected at the caucus, but around 10 were alternates or "guests" who registered as alternates at the door. These ended up being upgraded to delegates, so we ended up with 51 county delegates. The other candidate only had 16 of her 27 delegates/alternates show up. The final count, 51-16 means that Bernie picked up a state delegate at our county convention:
Bernie 8 - 3 Establishment.
There is a rumor going around that these results are typical, which means that Bernie will likely come out of the County Conventions stronger than he was at the caucuses.

Ok, so YAY team! I'm proud of Bernie supporters for showing up and participating in democracy!

But wait! I just told you that all the people who caucused for Hillary just got their votes trimmed by 25% just because the people they chose as delegates couldn't be bothered to show up! I'm sorry, but that's totally fucked up! It benefitted the better candidate (objectively and subjectively) this time, but putting an "enthusiasm tax" on peoples' franchise is not democratic. Being able to attend 3 different 1/2 day to full weekend events should not be a criterion for having your voice heard.

The part that I liked the most was the discussion and voting on Party platform planks. We actually had a discussion about what we wanted the State Party to include in their platform. This felt like real democracy in action, and I hope that we can build on this type of interaction in the county party chapter. I'm looking forward to Vegas, because I'd like to see how much of this county activism survives the encounter with the state party machine.

One final point: I've noticed many folks here have given up on the Democratic Party. They say it's too entrenched in its power structure to be taken over from the inside. I'm skeptical of this position in general; if one branch of the establishment is too strong for us, how are we going to defeat the whole thing? But that aside, this particular County Democratic Party could easily be swung to support the people. I suspect that rural counties and districts around the country are in similar conditions. Higher population centers are more likely to have deeply entrenched interests with their tentacles on the levers, but with us rural folks pushing from the inside, and you outside-the-system believers (Big Al and Shaharazade come to mind) causing havoc on the outside, we have a real chance of bringing the revolution.

I'll leave you with this, which is about as political as the boys ever got:
"Commissars and pin-stripe bosses
Roll the dice.
Any way they fall,
Guess who gets to pay the price.
Money green or proletarian gray,
Selling guns 'stead of food today."
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WninWFtO0Gg]