Note: This morning (Sunday) I've made several additions to the section dealing with the Obama event in Laramie. There are also some more links to follow, including some videos. Finally, I've also added a completely new report at the end of this diary dealing with the Albany County caucus. Albany County is definitely the strongest Obama territory in the State, but those Hillary supporters in Albany County pulled off a terrific turnout with marvelous consequences.

First of all, when I began this diary, this was the latest count reported.

That looked like a major loss, percentage-wise. However, if those percentages are applied to 12 delegates they yield (rounded) 7 for Obama and 5 for Hillary. Or, in other words, only a net gain of 2 delegates for Obama.

Now, I doubt if those figures include the results from Johnson County (which caucuses at the Buffalo Senior Center), Weston County (which caucuses at the Newcastle Senior Center), and most importantly, Sheridan County (which caucuses at the Sheridan Senior Center). In fact I know that they cannot include the last, because it caucuses from 2 to 6 PM, and it is currently only 4 PM in Wyoming. These are 3 of the 4 caucuses which happen to be held at Senior Centers in Wyoming.

I was able to work at the Bill Clinton event in Laramie on Thursday, Hillary's event in Cheyenne on Friday, and the Albany County Caucus on Saturday morning. I also attended and observed the Obama rally in Laramie on Friday night. It was all good, and, in spite of the minor loss today, very hopeful for Hillary, imo.

Bill Clinton in Laramie

The Rocky Mountain News was one of the papers that reported on President Clinton's event in Laramie (at the University of Wyoming) on Thursday. Can anyone guess what t-shirt I was wearing? :) UPDATE 3/12/08 You don't have to guess anymore. You can see my t-shirt in this News 4 video.

Clinton's visit was greeted with much anticipation on the campus, with a line forming early in the afternoon in sub-freezing temperatures.

As the wind chill nudged the thermometer lower, supporter and volunteer Nick Kelly began wishing he had his coat with him.

"They're doing a security sweep and my jacket is in there," he said. "I keep going up to them, hoping they'll change their mind, but I guess I'll have to wait."

The 63-year-old from Boulder, in a black short-sleeved T-shirt festooned with Hillary Clinton stickers, was going up and down the line handing out more stickers that were gobbled up by supporters.

In the course of about 20 minutes, the line had grown to more than 200 people.

"This is amazing," he said. "It shows that every state counts - even Wyoming."

There were over 1600 people inside the Laramie event who got to see and hear Bill Clinton give his excellent speech. Here's a video of him speaking about the need for new energy technologies. UPDATE 3/12/08: Here's another video that shows him covering some other points. Another 200 or so listened (albeit to a very noisy audio) in another room, and I saw what was roughly another 1500 who left because they couldn't get into the first room and actually see Bill, and they didn't like the noisy audio in the second room. Some of the people attending were Obama supporters. I spoke to one (who is a major on-campus supporter of Obama) who told me today at the caucus after hearing both Bill and Barack (on Friday night), that he was more impressed with Bill! :) I told him he needed to see Hillary if he ever could, because she was even better! And Chelsea also! :)

It really was a lot of fun working that event. I was there with several other Hillary supporters from Ft. Collins (which is closer to Wyoming than is Boulder). We did a lot for visibility, planting (and attempting to plant) Hillary signs in the near permafrost conditions and/or packed snow and ice. The many students helping from U of Wyoming were really great with all the inside stuff (registering people, finding some of them seats, etc.), although I didn't see any of them accepting any interviews with the press/media. One of them told me that it was tough to be for Hillary or even working at Bill's event when most of her friends were for Obama, so she didn't want to be in the papers or on TV News. I guess that is the way it goes on many college campuses. UPDATE 3/12/08 At least one U. of Wyoming student did speak to the media as you can see in this News 4 CBS video.

I stayed the night in Laramie, and on Friday, the Laramie newspaper (I think it's the "Boomerang") had a great 3/4 front page article on Bill Clinton's event there, as well as two previous events he'd been to previously that day. A couple of other Wyoming newspapers likewise gave his (and Chelsea's) visit some very prominent first page space. It was great coverage.

Hillary in Cheyenne

I went to work again on Friday at Hillary's afternoon event in Cheyenne at the Laramie County Community College. Yes, Cheyenne is in Laramie County. Laramie, however, is in Albany County. Those Wyoming people really have a sense of humor. :) Anyway, the work was much like before, although after about an hour or so, I was asked to sit inside on some strategically placed bleachers. One of the volunteer organizers liked my t-shirt and my cowboy hat, and wanted to be sure they showed up as part of the background to Hillary on the evening news. That was pretty cool, but even better was the other guy with a cowboy hat they asked to sit beside me. I won't report his name but he is a Native American, and a veteran of Korea and Vietnam. It was really great talking to him (as well as all the other people around me) while we waited for Hillary to appear. We were also entertained for a while by a great group of Wyoming youngsters called Hands and Hearts (I think), who hand-signed and lip-synched many very patriotic songs, including the Star Spangled Banner, the Pledge of Allegiance (set to music), This Land Is Your Land, and that wonderful patriotic song celebrating our troops that contains the words "and I'll gladly stand up next to you...." to which my new Native American friend and I stood up, and the whole rest of the audience immediately followed.

Hillary was absolutely brilliant. I'm sure you can imagine. So far, I haven't found a video of her presentation, but here's a video of her arrival and introduction. Once Hillary was introduced, as you can see in that video, she had not a single note, yet began seamlessly with thank you's to all the Wyoming people responsible for her being there, and she very nicely honored the Governor (who was there and being very cheerful in the front row, in spite of the fact that he has previously said he doesn't like any of the candidates) and his wife. Of course she also mentioned being in Wyoming many times before. I learned she was there in 1969. Coincidentally, so was I. She went on to tell of her road trip to Alaska from there, and of her job "sliming" salmon which she had in Valdez, Alaska. She got a good chuckle from the audience when she said that at the time she didn't realize just how well that would prepare her for some of the things she would later come up against in politics.

By now, we all know her story, and what she has done for so many other people, as well as where she stands on all the issues, so I won't cover that. But I do want to emphasize that she hit every note just right, and was full of energy as well as just the right degree of command presence. She will make one terrific POTUS and Commander-in-Chief, and I'm certain that her completely packed in audience picked all that up!

Then, of course, she took questions, and the room was completely full of people wanting to ask them! We were all very excited. As usual, she dazzled everyone with her answers. I only want to mention one of those exchanges for now. The question was about what she planned to do about the high cost of malpractice insurance for physicians, with the add-on that it was particularly costly in Wyoming. Her answer covered several key elements, the first and foremost of which was that malpractice insurance costs would come down once we have universal health care. That's because a significant number of current malpractice suits are filed by the parents of a child who is either born with or suffers from a condition that requires very expensive medical care. And of course, our private health insurance companies most often refuse to pay for such care (for any number of reasons). That virtually bankrupts the parents, and they naturally file suit to have their Doctor's malpractice insurance pay. In other words, they wouldn't need to file those lawsuits if they had the health insurance coverage Hillary proposes to make available to all. And since many of them don't really blame their Doctors, they would not sue them, unless they had to to pay their bills. (My gosh, I thought to myself. Why haven't I thought of that?) There was much more to her answer, including the fact that she did know that some malpractice was really malpractice, and that the courts would still need to deal with those cases, but they should be fewer and further between, thus reducing the actual costs to malpractice insurance companies, who would be expected to lower their premiums.

Obama in Laramie

It was nearly around 5 PM when I left Cheyenne to drive back up over the mountains to Laramie. When I got to the Obama rally there I found a very long line outside that was not moving. However, very shortly it did move, and I made my way inside while talking to Obama supporters who of course, noticed my hat (which, like my t-shirt, was "festooned" with Hillary pins and stickers).

The arena has a capacity of over 16,000, and I was told that there are about 21,000 students at the University. Once I arrived, nearly everyone was seated, and there were only about 8,000 people inside, with the top sections all empty, so I wandered along just below those until I heard someone call my name. Sure enough, some of my fellow Hillary supporters and new Wyoming friends were there, having driven from Cheyenne after the Hillary event was over. (And, by the way, the Wyoming Governor and First Lady were not at the Obama event, although the fact that so many others attending the Hillary event also came to the Obama event is evidence that they had time enough to get there if they had wanted to make that part of their evening. Interesting, eh?) Anyway, my friends and I resolved to let Obama have his chance to inspire us.

Just before he came into the arena, the Cowboys mascot, Pistol Pete, came running in with the University of Wyoming flag. I thought that was a little weird, since most State Universities I know are not happy about having their mascots, logos, or other symbols appear to endorse a candidate. I guess that thought hasn't occurred to the Obama campaign, however, because once he got on the stage he immediately thanked the University (in general) and Pistol Pete - even telling a joke that the Secret Service had confiscated Pete's Pistol, so tonight he was just "Pete".

Then Obama read from notes the names of all the people he wanted to thank. He couldn't pronounce some of them. That naturally contrasted unfavorably with how nicely Hillary had thanked her Wyoming supporters. As he got into his standard stump speech, some of us (including myself) politely applauded his standard hope lines, but a few didn't. I also noticed that there were other people in the arena who didn't applaud him. I judged them to be Wyoming people, most likely, giving Obama a chance, like we were doing.

Before I get into some specific things about his speech that I think you should all know, I want to be quite clear that I didn't actually find his speech to be inspiring - or, for that matter, loaded with anything hopeful. Instead, he touched on just about every problem Hillary had covered earlier in Cheyenne (and got applause for each such problem), BUT for the most part, he didn't propose any specific solutions, or (with the exceptions of Health Care and aid to education) even assert that he had any. Imo, if Hillary were a relative political newcomer, like Obama; and she had given the same speech Obama gave; and she had delivered it with comparable passion and style; I imagine a great number of people in that same audience would have wondered "where's the beef" (what are your proposed solutions, young lady)?" But, for some reason (possibly rooted in a double-standard), his many enthusiastic supporters in the audience apparently gave Obama a pass on that question. I say that both because of their general applause, as well as the positive reaction to several randomly occurring shouts from various members of the crowd to Obama that "I love you!"

Now, here are some specific things that stand out for me. First of all, he has apparently changed his tune on promising to withdraw all of our troops from Iraq within a year. This time (in response to claims that a year would be "precipitous") he promised something a lot more like what Hillary has been saying, namely to plan to withdraw one or two brigades per month for as long as it takes to bring them home, even if that takes longer than one year. His audience thought that was brilliant, naturally, although I doubt that many of them realized where he got the idea. Second of all, during his usual "hope and change" speech, he made some wildly incorrect claims about Hillary. For example, he asserted that Senator Clinton was so used to Washington that she didn't think it could be changed or even want it to be changed, other than changing who was in the driver's seat (much applause). For another example of his incorrect claims regarding Hillary, see my comment here. Thirdly, during his health care speech, he said that his plan was to make insurance companies enable parents to cover their children until they were 25 (much applause), help everyone who didn't currently have health care to be able to buy into a system similar to the one Federal employees had, and (without any qualification) for those who already had health insurance he was going to cut their premium costs by $2,500 per year (much applause). He also told a story about a mother he had met who couldn't get her insurance company to pay for treatment of her child's condition, and assured everyone that his plan would make certain that didn't happen to more people (much applause). (I thought, you forgot to mention that your plan won't be offered to that mother, however, because she already has insurance. Oh well, she'll save $2,500 though - won't she......?)

Obama didn't take any questions, and his speech was over in less than an hour. As we were leaving the arena, I ran into several of Hillary's student supporters who had worked President Clinton's event in Laramie the day before. Some of them had also made it to Cheyenne for Hillary's event, and I was pleased to see that they were all wearing their Hillary pins and stickers to this Obama event. One of them asked me to help out at their Albany County caucus the next morning, and I gladly accepted.

Albany Couty Caucus

So, bright and early, Saturday morning I was up for breakfast and left for the Albany County caucus. It was held in a fairly old building near the center of town. Right away I noticed that there did not appear to be any sort of handicapped access. No ramps. No working elevators. And quite a few steps along the circuitous path that people had to follow just to get their paper ballots. Yes, they did have numbered paper ballots. The pathway through the old building was marked with occasional signs that had arrows pointing to "Registration".

There were lots of very nice volunteers being briefed on what to do once someone reached their alphabetized section of the "Registration" desks. Naturally (as I've seen in Colorado - which is also a caucus state), the briefing wasn't heard the same way by all of the volunteers, and after it was over, many of them still had questions. Various volunteers tried to explain what they heard to other volunteers and the result was pretty darn confusing (at first). Fortunately, the County Clerk was very effective in going from volunteer to volunteer and getting them pretty much squared away, at least as well as anyone could have, I think. Once things settled down a bit, I approached the County Clerk and asked if she needed any help. She checked to be sure that all "Registration" positions were filled, and when she was satisfied that they were, I volunteered to take a voided ballot out to show to the people in line so as to let them know what they were in line to get, and that they couldn't just fill it in and leave it until they had actually "caucused" with their neighbors and heard the speeches. She was grateful for the help, and gave me a voided ballot for that purpose.

I spent well over an hour holding up the voided ballot and explaining that to small groups of over 1300 people who came to vote. (Needless to say, that broke all previous county records by a huge factor.) Some of them were pretty funny, asking me if they were supposed to vote for "Void". ;) I was standing close to some of the stairs that needed to be navigated, and it was pretty wonderful to see how people in line and some of the young orange vested volunteers would help their friends and neighbors up those stairs. With good people like that, I thought, the lack of conventional handicapped access to this event might not be such a big deal after all.

Finally, the flood of people dropped to almost nothing, and a young orange vested volunteer told me they wouldn't let any more people in at that entrance. I had much earlier noticed that one elderly gentleman was sitting alone on a bench at the back of the entrance-room, so I now went to him and asked whether he had "registered" yet. He said, 'Yes, I'm a registered voter. I'm just waiting for my son-in-law to come back from parking the car, so he can take me to vote.' I realized that he (like many of the older, experienced voters who had already asked me why they needed to "register" again) quite logically didn't understand that he would have to be in the "Registration" line to get his ballot. After I explained that he was supposed to follow the "Registration" line to vote, I asked him if he would like me to take him to vote, and he said, 'Yes, please. I think maybe my son-in-law has already gone through that line, because I've been sitting here for a very long time.' Well, I decided he deserved to get up to near the front of the line, and I knew a short-cut, so I took him up there and found another experienced voter who was happy to help him through the final stretch.

By shear coincidence, almost exactly when I arrived there with that elderly gent, there was quite a bit of confusion amongst a crowd of voters who had "registered", and had left the registration gym with their ballots, but who were being turned away from the auditorium where the caucus was to be held because it was filled to overflowing and the Fire Marshall's rep said no more people could go in there. Fortunately, the confusion was partly (but not quite) resolved by a volunteer who said loudly that from now on everyone who had "registered" now needed to go the the big gym on the opposite side of the building. As it happened, the start of the path to that gym was the last part of the short-cut I had just taken with the old gent. And so I became an instant traffic cop, waving my ballot in the air, and calling out that people who had their ballots needed to head back down the hallway I had just come up, and turn right twice to find the big gym. I noticed that the person who had been directing the "registration" line around that particular corner was (using the same confusing language as the other well-meaning volunteer who had shouted before) telling people that if they were "registered" they needed to go to the big gym now. And so it was (unfortunately) that many older registered voters coming along in the "registration" line (which was really the line to pick up ballots), started to leave that line and head in my direction. Several of them recognized me from before, and I had to patiently explain that they should not go to the big gym unless they had their ballots, while simultaneously waving the ballot and calling to other people who did have ballots to come towards me. One older fellow gave me a knowing grin, looked around, and asked, "What's the definition of chaos?" I said I wasn't sure, but that I would bet it included caucuses. ;) Sadly, several of them asked me how much longer this was all going to take, because (for example) they had to get to the hospital (or somewhere else) for volunteer work, and I had to tell them I didn't know. Around a dozen of them said thanks for what I was doing, and they then left the building.

Eventually, perhaps half an hour later, the traffic direction need suddenly dropped down, so I went into the big gym to see what was happening. People were sitting everywhere, on the bleachers, against the walls, and when they saw me, of course, many of them wanted to know what was next. I went back and tried to find out from various orange vested volunteers - since I couldn't locate the County Clerk. Of course, everyone had slightly different answers. Some said they had to wait there until the first wave in the auditorium had heard the speeches, voted and left, and then they would be brought into the auditorium as a second wave. Others said the speakers would come to the big gym. Yet others said they could vote without hearing any speeches if they would just leave the big gym now and come to the auditorium and drop off their ballots without hearing any speeches. On balance, I thought the most authoritative sounding answer was that they needed to continue to wait in the big gym until they were told what to do next by a caucus official. So, I went back and tried to spread that word. However, there was no microphone, and by then the place was full of rumors and people chattering. Some people were even leaving, and some were giving their ballots to others before leaving.

Perhaps 15 minutes later, someone I'd not seen there before came in and tried to tell the people that they could now simply deposit their votes in a ballot box at the door to the big gym and leave. Most people couldn't hear him. So I took off my cowboy hat, waved it around and shouted "QUIET", at the top of my lungs, and it quieted down enough that about half the people might have been able to hear him. Just then one of the Obama volunteers I had met and whom I felt was a solid guy told me that the votes would count, but if they left, and didn't hear the speeches, they wouldn't get to select delegates to the state convention. By then, quite a few people were already heading towards the door. So, the two of us tried to get that word around, and of course it raised additional questions.

I guess I should also mention that during that bit of question asking, some of the people told me they had been told at "registration" to sign the backs of their ballots. That, I think, is a good precaution to insure that no one else fills in your ballot. We do something like that in Colorado on our mail-in ballots. However, a great number of people, more than half, I think (and I'll get to why I think that), did not sign their ballots; and many people I asked said they weren't told to do so.

So, I decided to ask the guy holding the ballot box at the door if the ballots needed to be signed. He said no, so that's what I told people. "I don't know, but the guy holding the ballot box says no."

After a few more minutes, I decided to find whomever would be counting the ballots and offer my help. It took a while, but eventually I found the person in charge, and they eventually accepted my help. Roughly half an hour later, I went with a group of about 15 people to the counting room. The group included at least three other Hillary supporters that I know of, as well as at least half a dozen Obama supporters that I recognized. We worked quite well together, and when we compared our total count to the County Clerk's record of ballots distributed, we had accounted for every ballot. So, we can conclude that everyone who stayed long enough to get a ballot actually got that ballot into the ballot box, somehow. However, in counting those ballots, I noticed that relatively few of them were signed on the back, so we don't actually know who filled them in. The County Clerk, nonetheless, declared that they did not need to be signed, so we counted all of them.

The final count in Albany County was 969 for Obama, 328 for Hillary, 11 for uncommitted, and three spoiled ballots. As Albany County is the home of the University of Wyoming, it's not surprising that Obama voters prevailed here by a large margin. In fact, Albany county is the single strongest county for Obama in all of Wyoming. That's one of the reasons Obama held his rally there on the night before the caucus. However, Albany County Hillary supporters can be proud on a number of levels. First of all (and I realize that there are other equally valid ways to come to a different conclusion about this, but please indulge mine for a moment), due to the quirks of rounding and the voting totals across the entire state, without their 328 votes, Hillary would have won only 4 delegates to the State Convention, rather than 5. Albany County's enthusiastic voter turnout for Hillary was thus not at all in vain, even though they were outvoted 3 to 1 by Obama supporters. Furthermore, also due to the quirks of rounding, Albany County Obama supporters fell short of enough votes to send 2 Obama delegates to Denver. Ignoring for a moment the possibility of unforeseen things occurring at the State convention, their 969 votes are only 133% of the 729 needed in this caucus to send a delegate to Denver. Hence, by the quirks of rounding, even if we dedicate their entire margin of victory to their one county, Obama's most numerous core supporters in Albany County ultimately succeeded in electing exactly the same number of delegates to Denver as did the greatly outnumbered Hillary supporters in Albany County. That's one delegate each.

So let me bring this report to a close by saying that this Colorado Hillary supporter raises his cowboy hat in great respect to all the Democrats who turned out in Wyoming, but especially to the wonderful Hillary supporters in Albany County, home of the University of Wyoming Cowboys and Cowgirls! Yeehaw!