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[joshcryer]

18. Don't get me wrong I love caucuses and caucased for Edwards.

I may have been mistaken for caucusing for Edwards but I couldn't swallow the Obama / Hillary pill so at the time in Colorado Edwards was the last viable candidate (OK in theory it would've been impossible to turn his candidacy around so it was a simple point of contention for me).

But caucuses are at a certain time, people can't go to them throughout the day. If and I mean if there was a national voting holiday for both primaries and the general election, this argument wouldn't stand, but those who could afford to go to a caucus were more affluent. I saw it with my own eyes. You seem to agree with allowing for proxy votes at caucuses for people who couldn't attend at a certain time.

Obviously though Hillary's campaign fell apart before that part. She didn't have the superdelegates she expected and thought she'd shore it up before caucuses became relevant. After that point the caucuses weren't well led by her team.

Caucuses have within them a sort of peer pressure type of dynamic, if you are seeing that the other side is winning you want to be on the winning side, so you might go in there supporting one person, but by the end you support someone else. It is in effect the same as having campaign paraphernalia at the polling booths, a biasing effect (which is why such things are banned at the polls). If I go into a room and am on the losing side am I going to voice my opinion? Maybe if it's close but if it's overwhelming I am not, I will just keep my mouth shut. With regards to Edwards I kept my mouth shut and only said that I supported his anti-poverty message since basically all the candidates seemed to agree on all the issues other than that. I wasn't very convincing to a huge number of Obama supporters and our caucus went for him 3 to 1 with Hillary being second. I don't recall how Edwards went. There were many fewer women present and it was composed of mostly young people (note: of course I was young at the time too but I found it striking how disproportionate we were).

In theory the democratic process should be anonymous without any pressure from any side at the moment the vote is cast. You go to the vote before hand, with your mind made up, and nothing pressures you to go a given way. Caucasus are cool in that you can talk out how it is, but they should be before the vote is cast, maybe a day or two so you can do the relevant research. Not at the very moment you're voting.

Now Bill might accuse caucuses of screwing Hillary over and I may have expressed discontent in how they worked in Obama's favor in the 2008 elections but truth be told I don't think that's the reason she lost then. It was just a better ground game for Obama and the caucuses were a small part of that, she should've shored it up long before they mattered. It didn't help that she failed to express a consistent personality or image throughout the campaign and that she got caught on several occasions exaggerating about one thing or another.

It remains a fact that Hillary got a standing ovation at CAP and has been pushing progressive rhetoric for the past few months. She's running. And, to clarify again, Bill is wrong about the caucuses being an issue. They are far far better than not having primaries at all which McCaskill supports.