Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Mardi Amplus

amplus : large, spacious, ample / great important, honorable

OK, as I understand it, "Mardi Gras" means "Fat Tuesday" so I decided to try to figure out what "Super Tuesday" would be. Strangely enough, "super" is actually a Latin word itself, which does not mean "super" in English - it means "above."

Anyway, tonight was a first for us: we went to the Minnesota caucus. We decided to be part of Super Tuesday. We were not alone. The crowd of people trying to participate was HUGE. There were cars lined up for more than a mile trying to get into the parking lot at our Democratic caucus location. Many, many people didn't get in the building until after the normal caucus would have been over.

The wife of Representative Tim Walz came in at one point and she was clearly pumped. If this sort of turnout is indicative of what the general election will bring, the Democrats will make a big change in November. According to the news, the Rochester area Democrats had a turnout that was 300% of their previous record! Over 4500 votes cast!

The entire caucus process got to be a little long, but in the end it was enjoyable to see the process work. Having been a part of it was inspiring -- Sherry even became a delegate!

I haven't been so hopeful about the future of the country in a long time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post!

--Ollie Ox

Michael Hacker said...

Congratulations to Sherry. And I agree with you, Steve. There's a fresh wind of relief in the air. Freedom! Freedom from being held hostage to fear by those viscious Republicans. Karl Rove said two years ago that the Republicans were in a position to be the major power in US politics for the next 20 years. He was ultimately as wrong about that as everything else. Small wonder nobody hears from him any more.

Of course, if the Republican party machine is as good at voter disenfranchisement this time as they were last time--he might be right. Vigilance!