Iowa Update

Y’all remember Iowa. The lead-off caucus state. Y’all remember That there were 45 pledged delegates: 16 to Obama, 15 to Edwards and 14 to Edwards. Those numbers have changed….

Yes, it’s all legal.

Remember that in caucus states, the initial votes are at the local level (in Texas, 31 Senatorial districts and in Pennsylvania, 19 Congressional Districts for example) extrapolated by the news organizations toward the final numbers. But what they use are “X” number of local delegates, which is larger than the actual number of district delegates. These delegates go to district, county and/or state conventions (based on state regs) to winnow the numbers.

The County Conventions were yesterday, and it looks like the final count will come out to be 28 Obama/17 Clinton. If you want to see the full breakdown, I refer you to my source: http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/. If you think that “11” isn’t that big a number, remember that when Hillary Clinton had her March 5^th “blowout” she netted 4 delegates. This means, including the SuperDelegates and excluding the undeclared delegates, the total count is now 1598 Obama/1492 Clinton. If you include the total Florida and Michigan counts (and I DON’T) the count is 1685 Obama/1670 Clinton. Upshot -- it no longer matters if those numbers are included, in the sense that the outcome will not change.

A personal note, the greatest personal political irony of my life à I’ve always wanted to be called to jury duty. I used to call the county and ask why I HADN’T been called to jury duty. (I gave up on that about 10 years ago because it didn’t help.) I BELIEVE that the jury process in NY is best because there are no excuses. Juries are better when they are comprised of a true section of citizens, not just “those too stupid to get out of jury duty” as the old saying goes. Well, I’ve FINALLY been called to jury duty. Here’s the punch line -- for the day of, and the day before, the most important primary in Pennsylvania history.