The Wyoming caucuses

[existentialist]

That the candidates are seriously campaigning in Wyoming considering the relatively few delegates at stake means something. I'm not sure what.

Consider:

Wyoming will have a total of 18 delegates.

Of these 18, 6 are super delegates who have already been selected.

That leaves 12 delegates. Of these, 12, 7 will be selected directly today, and they will be selected proportionately. Therefore, if I do the math correctly (including my best guess on how the rounding process will work), unless either Obama or Clinton gets 9/14s of the vote, or about 64.3%, the delegates selected today will split 4-3. That's right, 4-3, a split of ONE delegate.

Actually it's slightly more important than that because the selection of the remaining 5 delegates, to occur at the state Democratic convention in May will also most likely be influenced by the caucuses today. It is also possible that the caucuses could influence some of the super delegates to commit or to change their position--still . . . .


Meanwhile, for these relatively small stakes, both Obama and Clinton are making what are to my mind unfortunate and harmful statements that may come back to haunt them and Democrats generally about developing "clean coal."