Effort to change parties worth it

Paul Gwin, Las Vegas

Friday, Feb. 1, 2008 | 2 a.m.

I attended the Nevada Democratic presidential caucus. It offered a better way to get voters involved than past caucuses. More than 10 times as many people took part. There was a lot of griping about the inefficiency and chaos, but most of it was in good fun.

At my precinct meeting, I had to go through a line to get the form for changing parties before I could get a ballot, then had to go through another line to get a ballot.

When I had the ballot in hand I discovered I was surrounded by people with Hillary Clinton signs and couldn’t spot Barack Obama’s corner, and I was unable to get out of Clinton’s before someone began counting heads. I handed a ballot in before I left and hope they used the ballot count rather than the head count to determine the number of delegates each candidate was entitled to. I didn’t mind the effort involved to change parties; actually the GOP left me years ago.

I think any of the top Democrats would make a good president. The logic and practical sense that fill their brains are above anything we have heard from politicians in many decades.

There may be a sensible Republican candidate or two, but the party that backs them is fractured and doesn’t know what it believes. I joined the party after World War II when it was the Eisenhower party. Bush isn’t Eisenhower, and his backers don’t have the philosophy he had for serving all people. They serve a coalition of a few rich CEOs of global corporations.

Clinton and Obama have good ideas for solving the country’s problems. I pity them because Bush is leaving the government in ruins.

This is a really interesting election and I hope we continue to have caucuses. The caucuses need lots of fixing, but that will be done as we learn more about the process.