So they might have gotten to listen to Sean Astin (aka Sam Gamgee, the designated Clinton celebrity caucus speaker) over in Seattle.  Big deal.  They missed out on getting to hear Abbott Smith speak, I feel bad for those folks on the other side of the lake!  Who would have thought that an opening line like "I'm from Redmond" would get such wild reaction - and it only went up from there.

Didn't I warn you all that democracy can be a messy business, and that we'd need to be patient?  Even so, I didn't dream it would take so long.  The 1st CD Obama caucus was the last to finish, I believe; we unanimously approved the motion to adjourn at 9:08 pm.  It could have been worse - one of the Seattle LD's had over 200 candidates for delegate slots, and decided that they would have to finish the tally and call the winners today.

But let's talk about the results.  Based on the Feb 9 numbers, we expected that things would look like this (for the number of delegates moving on to the next stage):


What we actually got based on our fantastic turnout was this:


Let me run you through a few of the numbers, to show you how well we performed and the difference it made.

Here are the numbers from the Feb 9 caucus:

Here are how many delegates actually showed up April 5th:

Ouch, I hear you say - almost 100 Obama delegates didn't make it?  Well, it's not as bad as all that.  Here is the percentage of no-show delegates on each side:

But that's not the exciting part.  After alternates were seated, here is how things turned out:

Comparing that to the first set of numbers shows how many voting slots were lost:

WOW.  We outnumbered them 3-1 in delegates, and had so much more we could have lost; and yet they lost twice as many delegates as we did when all was said and done.

This happened because of our Alternates showing up.  Rita convinced me early on that we really wanted to push hard on getting Alternates to attend, and the national campaign reiterated that in every piece of communication with us locally.  Were they ever right.

So, if you came and suffered through as an alternate, it was for a good cause - it netted us an extra delegate on to the CD caucus next month.  Whether or not you were seated, it made a big difference.

Finally, you might be wondering why this didn't change things more.  It just has to do with the rounding that happens in delegate math.  For us to have gotten to 24 Obama, 7 Clinton in the 1st would have taken nearly perfect attendance.