Any doubts I had about whether or not Edwards' candidacy hurts Hillary more than Obama were erased today at my precinct caucus.
As you know, Edwards lost handily statewide, mostly because of the 15% viability threshold.
In my precinct we had 83 caucusers and 5 delegates.
We started out 42 for Hillary, 29 for Obama, 9 for Edwards, 3 undecided.
I gave a short one minute speech asking for supporters to make us viable -- we needed 4.
We ended up getting 6 additional supporters -- 3 from Hillary, and the 3 from undecided.
If it weren't for those Hillary supporters, we wouldn't have hit the 15 that we needed -- we would have been stuck at 12.
Since most of us would have either supported Hillary or (in my case) remained uncommitted, Hillary would have ended up with 3 delegates and Obama 2.
Instead, we got 1, Hillary got 2 and Obama got 2.
So Hillary supporters -- in my precinct -- gave up a 3:2 victory in order to help John Edwards remain viable.
For that, I owe them -- and all Hillary supporters -- my thanks. Unlike the Obama supporters, they stayed after the caucus voting ended to take care of the nitty gritty party details. They care about the party. All the Obama supporters just left.
I won't forget.
© Jed Lewison