After Dean's rousing Westlake Center speech, I ventured into my first meetup at Piecora's Pizza on Capitol Hill. The place was packed, thrumming with energy, and hopelessly chaotic. Most attendees had shown up, like me, to assess whether Dean's proposals were as inspiring as the charisma that had drawn 10,000 people to the Westlake rally. Unfortunately--and this should have set off warning bells--the chaotic meetup didn't provide the information I wanted.
Later that month, I defected to a nascent Generation Dean group, where six twentysomethings (among them a creepy guy who seemed to regard the meeting as a singles event) convened in a U-District coffee shop to discuss Dean's record and plan publicity stunts, such as walking my Norwegian elkhound around Green Lake with a Dean sign on its back (I actually did this). All the unbridled enthusiasm made me nervous about Dean somehow, and I kind of liked Kerry's delivery on the stump in contrast to Dean's. So I eventually went to the web, concluding again that Dean was, indeed, the only candidate making cogent arguments for the issues I cared about--things like repealing Bush's tax cuts and limiting student debt payments. No longer in need of meetups, though, I promptly faded from the active Dean scene--I was too busy working four part-time jobs, including teaching standardized-test prep and pet-sitting.
But as my activism waned, my personal politicking kicked in. I recruited friends to watch Meet the Press and discuss the Democratic debates, and I donated $25 to Dean over the Internet. Iowa shocked me, and the feeding frenzy that followed Dean's supposed scream left me dismayed.
On the Wednesday before the Washington State caucuses (still convinced Dean could pull off a comeback), I dragged myself downtown at 6:30 a.m. to see Dean speak. Later that day, I attended my second (this time useful) meetup to study caucus strategy. We outlined Dean's points of congruence with Kucinich, learned how to get elected as "uncommitted" delegates if Dean didn't receive 15 percent, and memorized how many years it'd been since a senator made the leap to president (44!).
Caucus day was thrilling and anticlimactic--none of my friends checked their e-mail in time to get the three-page strategy guide I'd prepared, and my exuberant 9:00 a.m. wake-up calls didn't go over well. In my own precinct (apparently left-leaning Wedgwood), neither Kerry nor Edwards made the 15 percent cutoff (so much for my seven-point argument about Dean's electability!). And the Kucinich voters were gleefully single-minded. I didn't persuade a single person to switch, although my father successfully beckoned a neighborhood dog-walker, and lonely Kerry backer, into our camp.
My precinct split: Two delegates for Dean and two for Kucinich. My lone triumph was narrowly averting disaster when I saw a runner tallying the results from each precinct mistakenly jot down "2 Dean, 2 Kerry."
