Our phone hasn't rung all day. All of the candidates and all of the out-of-state supporters and all of the media have moved on to the next contest.

I'm glad the Nevada caucus is over. At the same time, I'm not satisfied.

I spent some time yesterday and today searching for news about the caucus. I wanted to compare my experiences with others', and I was curious about how the national media would see us.

What I've found, over and over, has been the ugliness of politics. Is it politics they say is like sausage because you'd never eat it if you saw how it was made?

Remember your social studies classes? We were taught that we had the best system in the world for electing the people in our local, state and national governments. It turns out that was just the ideal, an ideal that assumed everyone involved was fair and honest whether policed or not.

Of course the Obama people are accusing the Clinton people of dirty tricks and the Clinton people are accusing the Obama people of the same. The Democrats are accusing the Republicans of sabotaging (or trying to sabotage) the Democratic caucuses. RGJ reporter Siobhan McAndrews voted in both the Republican and Democratic caucuses and wrote an article about it.

Democrats, in general, are intelligent and thoughtful and expect the best of other people. (I still don't understand what they were thinking when they invited any and all to register the day of their caucus and scheduled it to give time to Republicans to vote in their own caucuses and then come over and participate in theirs.) Republicans, in general, are narrow minded and not very smart and can be very mean. I say this as someone who was a Republican until a few years ago.

I can see how it would be possible for a candidate, or for supporters, to reach a point where they decide it's acceptable for them to cheat because their opposition is cheating. The end justifies the means. I'm pretty sure the Clintons reached that point early in their careers.

This is just my impression, but most of the complaints about dirty tricks are about the Clintonites. The Obama people are being accused of things, too, but those sound more amateurish. I expect the Obama people to become slicker as his career develops.

The complex Clintons

I fell in love with Bill and Hillary Clinton during his 1992 campaign when they appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss the controversy about one of his affairs. I was absolutely charmed and supported him in that election and the next. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal blew up, I fully believed him when he looked into the camera and declared, "I did not have sex with that woman." I'd been waiting for a denial from him, and his statement was enough for me. He lost me when it later became clear he had lied. He made fools of all the people who had trusted him.

I've admired Hillary over the years but hoped she would not run for president because of the pure hatred of the conservatives. It is so rampant it will be hard to overcome. The more I've learned about her during the campaign, however, the less I've liked her. The accusations about taking money from lobbyists especially bother me.

The impression I have of Hillary Clinton supporters (please feel free to except yourself from this generalization) is they are hard old women. I've had more than one tell me, "I'm doing this for my granddaughter." What the heck is that supposed to mean? How is voting for the first woman candidate for president going to help someone who is a girl today? Give her a role model? Blaze a path? I don't know. The truth seems more like, "I fought for equal rights for women in the 1970s and this is the payoff." The problem is, the first woman candidate for president is not the best candidate for president. I choose my candidate based on the issues, not on gender. These aging feminists are practicing the same discrimination they used to protest by choosing their candidate on gender alone and ignoring less-flawed male candidates!

I watched a couple of Hillary supporters try to convince a young Kucinich supporter to join their group. They kept repeating, "She'll fight for you. She'll fight for you." The young woman asked what Hillary's health insurance plan was, and both supporters were speechless! No, they did not choose their candidate based on the issues.

The more I learn about Obama the less I like him, too. He admires Ronald Reagan? Our income has stagnated and dropped since Reagan was elected. I see him (Reagan) as nothing but a good actor controlled by others.

The fighter vs. the establishment

I am still stumped by John Edwards' results. I talked to a lot of people in the last week who planned to caucus for him. It seemed to me that every Nevada blogger who chose a Democratic candidate chose Edwards. His town hall meetings were full of enthusiastic people. My precinct easily selected one of five delegates (20 percent) for him. How the heck did he end up with only 8.64 percent in Washoe County and 3.75 percent statewide? I saw one accusation on line that Clinton supporters were telling Edwards supporters he had withdrawn, and I know the 15 percent threshold for viability kept him from getting delegates in some precincts. Still, the polls showed twice as much support for him as the caucus results showed.

I kept an open mind about the caucus method of selecting delegates because I thought it was transparent and therefore fraud proof. Everyone in our neighborhood was a witness to the results, and all we have to do is verify our one Edwards delegate is listed in the final list of precinct results. But wait! The Democratic Party just lists the totals by county! As far as I can see, there is no way to verify that all the delegates chosen in the precinct caucuses were credited and counted accurately! Please correct me if I'm wrong so I can verify my precinct's Edwards delegate was counted. From what I'm hearing the party is controlled by Clinton supporters, so I can't help being suspicious.

As I said earlier, I chose Edwards based on the issues. I've liked him ever since his "Two Americas" campaign in 2004. I saw a comment on a blog today accusing him of trying to start a class war. I say the elites started the class war a long time ago and are winning it while most Americans still believe our country is just the way they learned about it in social studies classes. Rather than starting it, Edwards has stepped forward to help us fight.

I've gradually realized in the past weeks that Edwards is fighting an uphill battle. Political campaigns are won with money, and money goes to the candidates most likely to win and pay back the donors after they are elected. Edwards brags about not accepting money from corporate lobbyists, not planning to hire lobbyists in his administration and not compromising with the insurance companies for his health insurance plan. As a direct result, I think, all the corporate-owned media have acted as if he doesn't exist. There's no way his working/middle class supporters can finance his campaign against Obama and Clinton. If he were to become the candidate in the general election, I can't imagine the Democratic Party doing much to help him get elected. The Democrats still claim the role of the party of the people, but they are just as comfortable with the corporate money as the Republicans. And I don't really see how a man who plans to go to Washington, D.C., to fight corporate control of the country is going to accomplish much with the current Supreme Court and lobbyist-controlled Congress.

Edwards has said fighting for the working people/middle class is his life's mission and he will do that whether he is elected president or not. I plan to continue to support him in whatever he does. Jimmy Carter and Al Gore have shown how much a person can accomplish outside the presidency.

I plan to vote for whatever Democrat is nominated; all the Republicans are just plain scary. I think we can count on Clinton or Obama not to declare a pre-emptive war on anyone. Other than that, I wouldn't expect either of them to do much different from what Bush has done the past seven years. Anyone for a health care plan modeled after Medicare Part D?