One of the great undercovered stories of American politics is the decision of a growing number of Americans to express their Presidential choices before the media deluge following the early primaries. In 2004, I attended the Upper Dublin (Montgomery County, PA) Democratic caucuses before Iowa, and I got a first hand exposure to Howard Dean's potential weakness, when Wesley Clark defeated him there.
In the current election cycle, the National Presidential Caucus (http://www.nationalcaucus.com), has been formed, which encouraged local groups to hold caucuses on December 7. I got three of them off the ground, all in Philadelphia: the 17th Ward Caucus, the Central High School Caucus, and the Watermark (retirement community) caucus.
In the 17th Ward Caucus, organized by my longtime district office head Mable Windham and chaired by my chief of staff Mike Cassidy, held at the Philip Murray House, Hillary Clinton defeated Barak Obama 19 to 11 among the largely black senior citizens present. Not one vote was cast for any Republican, despite Mable's attempts to engage the local Republican committee.
In the Central High Caucus, organized by my daughter Amanda (with many suggestions from my wife Mona) and innovative history teacher Michael Horwits, Hillary Clinton was totally shut out and received zero votes.
The top vote getters were Obama at 22, Kucinich at 18, and Joseph Biden at 3 or 4. Ron Paul led Republicans with 2 votes. Both Obama and Kucinich received much support across racial lines there, Amanda informed me.
At the Watermark Caucus, led by my mother, Florence Cohen, the 90 year old head of the Residents Association there, 15 votes were widely divided among the overwhelmingly white and affluent senior citizens. Clinton got 4 votes, Obama 2 votes. Fred Thompson received the vote of the lone Republican present.
One clear fact unifying the disparate results of these three unofficial caucuses is that all three felt that ending the war in Iraq was the number one issue facing America. At the 17th Ward Caucus, abolishing the electoral college was a surprise and strong second place finisher.
Pennsylvania will not vote for President officially until April 22, 2008, by which time virtually everyone else in America will have weighed in and the race for President will likely have been decided in both political parties. In the highly unlikely case that the Pennsylvania primary is of some significance, we can expect the remaining candidates to be actively involved in persuasive efforts.
At these informal caucuses, the goal was to get people to participate in making a choice, and not to influence what that choice should be. No presidential campaign tried to influence the results, and nor did I.
My hope is that these examples of the National Presidential Caucus will be positive steps in moving Pennsylvania's Presidential primary up in future years, moving toward a national Presidential primary after the early states vote, and institutionalizing informal early caucuses around the country so that more citizens voices are heard in the Presidential nominating process.
And the results here are suggestive of themes that may or may not prove to be of overall relevance: the strong student support of Obama and Kucinich, the strength of Clinton among the black elderly, the emerge of opposition to the Iraq war as a key unifying issue among Democrats.
The political system often seems to conspire against public participation, and informal devices such as the National Presidential Caucus are a needed corrective trend in the right direction.