Wyoming Caucuses: Obama Wins

The trend continues where Democratic Senator Barack Obama does great in caucuses and not always as great in primaries — as he scores a solid win in Wyoming:

Senator Barack Obama continued his string of victories in caucus states on Saturday, beating Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Wyoming by a wide margin.

The victory, while in a state with only 18 delegates, was welcome news for the Obama campaign as it sought to blunt Mrs. Clinton’s momentum coming off her victories in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday. Mrs. Clinton had campaigned here Friday, a day after her husband and daughter, signaling the stakes every contest holds in the fierce battle for the Democratic nomination.

Party officials reported extremely high turnout at caucus sites across the state. More than 1,500 residents of Laramie County came to cast votes at the caucus site in downtown Cheyenne, filling the auditorium. Hundreds more waited outside for hours until they could enter and vote.

One of the patterns is that each side tends to pooh-pooh some of the wins by the other. Clinton has done particularly well in many primary states. Obama has done particularly well in caucus states. Some Democrats who oppose Obama argue that caucuses are really undemocratic and therefore don’t really matter — a charge that was not heard too intensely in past election years. Caucuses have been around for awhile.

And both sides did campaign energetically in Wyoming.

The LA Times:

Wyoming, with only 12 delegates at stake, became a player for the first time in years. Both candidates campaigned here, bringing the sort of attention that the state’s Democrats are not accustomed to. Wyoming, where more than two-thirds of voters are Republican, is often an afterthought in the Democratic presidential campaign.

But this week, both candidates came to Wyoming. Former President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton stumped here as well.

“This is a big win for us,” Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe said this afternoon in a conference call with reporters. “You saw very furious campaigning by the Clintons . . . They had more activity than we did, they mounted a very aggressive campaign on the ground.”

The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for a comment.

CBS News consultant Joe Trippi says that Clinton made a big mistake in not totally contesting caucus states:

But look at the caucus states before today and you can see where Obama gained his lead and where the Clinton campaign blundered so badly they may not be able to recover and win the nomination (see here for the full tally).

Clinton contested three caucus states — Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada. She won two of the three, kept Iowa close and tied Obama 41 delegates to 41 delegates across all three states.

Obama won all the other uncontested caucus states by astoundingly large margins. In these states Obama won 232 delegates to Clinton’s 110 delegates, a full 122 delegate advantage for Obama.

….If Clinton fails to win the nomination it will be the blunder of failing to contest every caucus state that will have cost her the prize. It was either a blunder of strategy or a blunder of failing to guard the resources needed to put organizers on the ground to contest these states.

Today the Clinton campaign has shifted strategy — contesting for every vote and every delegate in the Wyoming caucuses. But does the shift come 122 delegates too late.

A failure of her campaign — not a failure of Clinton as a candidate — may have cost Hillary the nomination.

Which suggests:

–If Clinton had contested them all, the numbers might now be different. Not quite as big a mistake as former New York Giuliani’s sit-out-until-Florida strategy…but not a good campaign strategists’ decision.

–The argument that caucuses don’t really count much or aren’t representative is likely to continue from the Clinton campaign.

–But the Clinton campaign is now contesting some caucus states.

Once again, until 2008 it was not a political issue about whether caucuses mattered more or primaries mattered more — the talking heads, printed reportage and politico-mouthings all talked about the numbers…the delegate count.

But times, miscalculations, and political vested interests have seemingly changed…