Two years from now, the Iowa caucuses will be wild things, as confusing as the caucus race in Alice in Wonderland. At caucuses, Democrats don’t just vote. You have to show up in person, and you’re expected to make your voice heard.

But this is an off year, so only a couple of dozen people came to elect delegates to the country convention, sign petitions for prospective candidates, and decline to serve on committees.

There were no stump speeches, although a few candidates, including one viable contender for the U.S. House of Representatives, came by to shake hands, fail to remember if they’d met us before, and offer us t-shirts. Also, there were cookies.

I’m going to the county convention, which should be better attended, not least because it’s going to be held in March and the temps should be above 0 by then. It will still be relatively low key, except for that guy. (The guy with the single issue that no one else gives a fuck about, who drags the meeting out for an hour longer than it needs to run. It’s a different guy each time, with a different issue, but there’s always a guy.)

It’s a far cry from six years ago, when we were selecting a presidential nominee. We milled around in groups, each one supporting a candidate, and each group playing a game of Red Rover, trying to get people from the smaller groups to join ours. There were four voters in our household, each one supporting a different candidate, and two of us were precinct captains. My older daughter’s candidate was a surprise winner who went on to become president.

Tonight’s meeting was quiet, and I spent most of it knitting and wondering what the Republicans were doing in their conclave. I kept reminding myself that the few people in that room, apparently doing nothing but chatting, were on the ground floor of an important process. We were making an unobtrusive but important effort to have our voices heard by the powerful. We showed up.