Making Sausage

One of the great things about living in a place like Maine is that you get opportunities people in more populous places don't dream of. Back in February, for example, when My Wife and I went to our town fire station to take part in the Democratic Presidential Caucus, I walked out as an Obama delegate to the state convention and My Wife was an alternate. How did that happen? After the voting, the guy running the thing said, "Who wants to be a delagate?" and we raised our hands. Pretty cool.

Flash forward to May 30. We arrived, along with a traffic-jam of others, at the Augusta Civic Center for the big event. My Wife, as an alternate, was told to report to the Cumberland County meeting area so that she could be upgraded to delegate status if some delegates didn't arrive. Cool. Indeed, she was quite keen on becoming an official delegate and casting her vote in what Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show, has deemed "The long-running Bataan Death March to the White House."

Since Cumberland County is Maine's largest county--and since the ol' Augusta Civic Center ain't exactly the most state-of-the-art and spacious facility--it turned out that the alternate meeting area was actually a set of bleachers way up in the third level of the arena. The bleachers had their advantages. Namely, that we could watch the speakers and events happening on the convention floor as My Wife waited to get 'upgraded.'

They also had their disadvantages. Namely, that by the time the amplified sound ricocheted itself around inside the building a few times and got to us, it was pretty much impossible to understand what any of those speakers were saying. It was like we had all suddenly become Charlie Brown trying to figure out what the heck the adults were talking about. Oh yeah, and another disadvantage was that we were sitting on BLEACHERS! Not so good for the back.

So, we made small talk with all the other alternates, and chuckled at the guys who were trying to get signatures on the medical marijuanna referendum. These guys had somehow wandered up into the nosebleed section, and I'm not sure that the thin air was helping out the coherence of their sales pitch.

At any rate, for about five hours--let me repeat this fact and assure all readers that it is not an exaggeration: for about five hours--we were repeatedly told that in about "five or ten minutes" the list of delegates would be finalized and the necessary number of alternates could be upgraded. And we had to pay for coffee. Suddenly the democratic process (or, to be fair, I should say the Democratic process, since surely the Republicans were kickin' back with free Starbucks at their event) didn't seem so awe-inspiring.

But, My Wife acted the whole time as if everything were great. No complaints, no resignation, just good old grassroots political enthusiasm. Which paid off. Finally, sometime around 3:30, she was officially, somewhat magically, turned into an honest-to-goodness delegate. Two hours later--having moved to the convention floor where we could understand the people talking and actually had backs on our chairs--we cast our primary votes for Obama, helping him to officially win the Maine delegate race by a 2:1 margin. Whoo-hoo!

Of course, My Wife's enthusiasm and dedication to the process shouldn't really be a surprise, since she picked out Obama's potential long before I even knew who he was. She said he could be a legitimate contender long before he entered the race, and she stuck by his side back when I was saying that nobody could defeat the Clinton Machine. As so often happens, My Wife was right, I was wrong. Nonetheless, both of our votes counted at the Convention.

Just as they will in November, when we finally get this country back on the right track.