Hillary's supporters have been making assertions about Obama's unelectability. They've made dark, vague references to the possibility that someone will find out something bad about him. Will you continue to express that concern if he is the Democratic nominee for President? Will you vote for someone else?

But not Fred Thompson. He fell asleep in his hotel room and missed the whole thing. He'll drop out tomorrow. There's really no rush.

Choose between a hopeful, open-minded, rational leader. Or someone who doesn't "believe" in evolution (i.e. scientific fact).

Choose between someone who gleefully shows off the tethered birds he's just shot at point blank range on television and someone who speaks intelligently about the need for health care reform, deficit reduction, and the need to repair our international standing.

A small, important first step was taken today. May there be many more.

Besides reading thse accounts of Democratic caucuses, I watched C-SPAN's coverage of a Democratic and Republican caucus, and I was struck by the differences between the two. The Democrats debated, traded, and elected the individuals who would be delegates to the state convention, while Republicans heard pitches for some campaigns and then voted, getting nothing to say about who would be delegates at the next level. The Democrats elected local party officers, while the Republicans heard the local chair name THE candidate for a post, announce election by acclimation if thre was no objection, and hearing none in a couple seconds, declared the election over. The Democrats spent a lot of time on their resolutions, while the Republicans just left. Other people higher up get to pick resolutions I guess. I didn't see how the Democrats started their caucus, but the Republicans started with an explicitly Christian prayer. No non-Christians need apply. Is there still a difference between conservative churches and the Republican Party?

You've pilloried Obama all along in ways subtle and overt. Even your coverage of tonight's primary feels surprisingly free of your usual editorial verve, limp and phoned in out of sheer obligation. No telling what may happen from here on, but we'll continue to monitor closely the tone of your coverage of Barack Obama, the man to beat. Grin and bear it!

No one should be able to read the first couple paragraphs, highlighting the playground red rover nature of the whole "caucus" fiasco, and not either burst into tears or fall off their chair laughing. Are we serious? Is this what the most "advanced" democracy in the world can present? A bunch of people bullying others into making a choice? Fucking fantastic.

since I let my premium membership go because of certain trends I've seen on salon I find it ironic that interspersed in the "how barack...swept.." are ads for mike bloomberg.

for those with the premium status, I'll save you the trouble

mike bloomberg

visit the official mike bloomberg site

does this make it official now that iowa is over that mike is throwing his hat in the ring?

as a new yorker, even I'm sick of the new yorkers in the race, do we need a third?

...no matter what they tell the pollsters.

Would you like some salsa with those words?

...no matter what Salon says.

It was not entirely a high-minded conversion experience.

Politics, even little-D democratic politics, boils down to horse-trading in self-interest. Beware the high-minded converts! The Iowa caucuses remind us that the roots of our government are in small groups of people getting together to thresh out their differences and make the deals they need to make to get things done.

And more power to Barack Obama, who, it seems clear, won by betting on voter involvement and then finding ways to make it happen. If sanity (or some measure of sanity, anyway) is to prevail in November that's what it will take.

I was co-chair of the Obama campaign in Fort Dodge Precinct 2 in Webster County, Iowa. it was my 8th caucus, and my third go-round as a candidate chair. I assisted the overall caucus chair in the tallies. I'll leave out the events that lead to Richardson, Biden and Dodd people to realign, but the result was only three viable candidates.

Obama had 93 supporters there; Edwards had 63, and Clinton had 49. The Clinton and Edwards numbers are approximate due to my bad memory, but the caucus math works with those numbers for our purposes. The following math shows exactly what happened.

FD2 precinct, based on the number of registered democrats that voted in the last general election, earned the right to elect 15 total delegates to the Webster County Democratic Convention.

To earn a delegate to the County Convention, a candidate's supporters must number 15% or more of the total people present. 205 people were present.

A quick percentage Calculation (205 * 0.15 = 30.75) was rounded up to 31.

So, a candidate supporter group needed 31 members to be viable. A group with 31 people in it is guaranteed 1 delegate to the County convention, and that delegate is bound to support the candidate for which those supporters gathered together.

To allot the delegates a simple equation is used.

Where W= the number of supporters a viable candidate has

Where X= the total number of delegates to be elected

Where Y = the total number of caucus attenders

Where Z = the number of delegates to be elected to the group.

The equation is: (W * X)/Y=Z

For Obama, Multiply 93 by 15, and divide by 205. The result is 6.804

For Edwards, Multiply 63 by 15, and divide by 205. The result is 4.609

For Obama, Multiply 49 by 15, and divide by 205. The result is 3.585

When rounded to the nearest whole number, these become:

Obama = 7

Edwards = 5

Clinton = 4

7+5+4 = 16. Too many delegates. There must be only 15 delegates. The excess delegate is deleted from the total of the group with the lowest fraction. In this case the Clinton group loses the delegate because .585 is less than .609 AND less than .804.

The final numbers are:

Obama = 7

Edwards = 5

Clinton = 3

These are the results the media reports; and added together with results from other precincts statewide, it's how they declare a winner.

This system is mathematically absolutely fair, and it works for all precincts that elect at least four delegates. Simpler formulas are used in the rare precincts that elect fewer than four.

The example I gave is the most complicated it can possibly be, but at the core it's simple. Get 15% of the people there in your group, and you get at least one delegate.