The last caucus in the country of the 2008 primary season was held, Saturday, in the Cowboy State, Wyoming, and surprise, surprise, Prince Charming, Barack Obama giddy-upped his way to a Teton-ic Mountain victory riding roughshod over Tough-Cookie-yes-Monster-no Hillary Clinton.

Wyoming is Little Dickie Cheney country. It’s no wonder the state fish is the Cutthroat Trout and there aren’t a Jackson Hole lot of Demobrats in the state. Wyoming hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, and there are only two reliably Democratic counties in Wyoming. In the 2004 presidential election, George Tush Bush won his second-largest victory there, with 69% of the vote.

Despite Wyoming's clear preference for Republicans in national offices, Democrats have held the governorship for all but eight years since 1975. Democrat Dave Freudenthal was elected in 2002 and has one of the highest approval ratings of any governor in the country. But Freudenthal ain’t no John Wayne swaggering westerner. Freudenthal walked the barbed wire fence line in this latest contest between Obama and HRC refusing to endorse either, again, no big surprise for a Democratic Governor in a Republican state.

But of course, Prince Charming didn’t need Freudenthal’s endorsement to win the Wyoming Caucus Doodle Doo. He is the reigning champion of all but the Nevada caucus in the rodeo of caucuses.

So you’d think after losing so many, by the time the Wyoming Caucus rolled out the barrel the Clinton campaign would have figured out how to win one of these things. But my friend Susan over at the website No Quarter, and one of the best researchers in the business, tells me that HRC’s losses weren’t necessarily of her own making.

According to Susan, caucuses are inherently unfair to HRC’s constituency, many who work on a Saturday, for instance, when the Wyoming caucus was held. Older folks, another of HRC’s constituency might not be physically able to attend a caucus. Susan mentioned blue-collar workers, who don’t have a lot of free time, and she talked about mothers as well, who can’t afford to hire a babysitter for several hours thus making caucuses a difficult venue for them to participate in.  

Caucuses are perfect for affluent liberal voters, Obama’s supporters and for college students, a core Obama constituency for whom attendance is a breeze, Susan explained.

She went on to say that the caucuses are biased in favor of upper-class voters and the party elite. The longtime honchos in some of the caucus states like the exclusivity of the system; the voters hate it.

Here’s an interesting statistic: In the Washington state caucus the difference in the absentee ballot vote and the caucus results were startling. Obama won the caucuses by 60+% but could barely reach 50% in the ballot vote.

“It's one thing to blame Hillary's campaign approach for the caucuses,“ Susan said.  “And that's an easy thing to do -- it's a favorite hobby of all the pundits. But they do NOT ask a key question: What could her teams have done to match the mobs of young and affluent Obama voters when most of her voters simply can't attend caucuses?  They could have gotten a slightly higher number of people out, no doubt, but enough to seriously affect the outcome? I wonder.”

Hopefully, the Super Delegates who are going to be deciding this contest will be wondering about it, too. The fact that many of Obama’s wins are in Red States, which don’t vote Democrat anyway, and that a sizeable amount of his constituency are African-American voters from southern states that also don’t vote Blue need to be considered if he is to be appointed the nominee.

Equally relevant to such a decision by the super delegates is the fact that HRC’s core constituency may not have been able to weigh in on their preference for her in all these caucus contests so that in fact, Hillary might actually be just as competitive in Red states as Obama. Also to be considered: Hillary is winning the key industrial states that matter most to Democrats in the fall.

There are more issues for the Super Delegates to weigh when they make their decision. But for now the horserace continues. Giddy-up horsy and happy campaign trails to you, next stop, Mississippi.

email>>  print>>   comment>>