322 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biographylikely to spend two or three hours going to a party caucus and hobnobbing with their peers then
were the low-wage hourly workers, housewives, and other working people who were far more
likely to support Senator Clinton. But was there another dimension beyond this? Had the Obama
people power coup developed a playbook of tactics to disrupt and subvert the caucuses? One
reported commented: ‘I have obtained a copy of a memo written by a Clinton campaign volunteer in
Washington state intended only for other Clinton volunteers in subsequent caucus states
(specifically for Texas campaign volunteers). It warns them of “caucus disruption strategies” by
supporters of Sen. Barack Obama. The memo was written by a University of North Carolina
professor emerita of anthropology who served as a volunteer Clinton precinct committee officer in
the Washington state caucuses last month. It warned other volunteer organizers about so-called
“strategies” alleged to have been observed by herself and by Clinton volunteers in Iowa and
Nevada: ... Individuals arriving all at once in large groups can disrupt the caucus by making it
difficult to keep track of sign-in sheets, among other things...Other behaviors that can make it
difficult for the caucus to run smoothly are deliberate disruptions with things like chanting, sign
waving, dancing or singing. The Precinct Chair (or Caucus Chair) will need to insist on order.
Individuals may arrive who are not registered to vote in a particular precinct with the story that
‘they just moved there.’ Some places where this has been observed, the person really didn’t fit the
picture of somebody who had ‘just moved into’ the precinct. They were allowed to register to vote
and to caucus....Supporters for a particular candidate, such as Senator Clinton, have arrived at
caucus sites early to decorate and organize and been told that ‘the building was locked.’ When they
are finally allowed into the building they see that signs for other candidates had already been
posted. Bottom line: know who you are dealing with in terms of the caucus coordinator ... This will
usually be some volunteer for the local Democratic Party.” (Bonnie Erbe, “Democratic caucus
disruptions,” Scripps Howard News Service, March 12, 2008)
There was also this eyewitness account from Pacific John of El Paso, Texas: ‘In one example of
fraud that I witnessed, one of my precinct captains, an elderly Hispanic woman, called me to report
that BHO supporters had illegally seized control of the convention. During our series of phone calls,
Mrs. “A.” reported that the Obama people took the convention materials and did not have a legal
election of officers. Like nearly all of El Paso, BHO people would have lost such an election in this
majority-Hillary, Hispanic, mostly elderly precinct convention. The Obama people ordered Mrs. A.
to sit across the room during the delegate calculation, and excluded Hillary supporters from the
process. Mrs. A. overheard an Obama supporter call in a false delegate count to Austin. In a 13
delegate precinct where Obama should have won approximately 4 delegates, the Obama supporters
attempted to award 19 delegates to Obama. This was not innocent. During my attempts at cell
phone diplomacy, the Obama “chair” hung up on me, and refused to talk to the ethical Obama
organizer I was paired with at another precinct convention. As with all major attempts at fraud that
we identified, this delegate count was rectified in private at the county TDP headquarters, according
to TDP rules, but there were no public charges or sanctions. It is my opinion that people should be
in jail, but there is not a mechanism for this sort of prosecution, certainly not within TDP rules.
Although I have only volunteered in one state, virtually every Clinton staffer I have talked to has
similar stories from other caucus states. While the Hillary field campaign operates and feels very
much like typical Democratic campaigns, the Obama campaign is something new to Democratic
politics. From my perspective, it looks like it has copied the worst attributes of Republican
campaigns, but with unprecedented zeal.’^172