The symbolism was good: In the same South Seattle union hall where
John Edwards appeared in May courting the state’s blue-collar vote,
Hillary Clinton’s campaign held a caucus training session for its most
devoted supporters. No mention was made at the November 10 training
session of Edwards’s earlier use of the hall, or of the large, cheering
crowd that Edwards drew. But, in a not-so-subtle bit of braggadocio, it
was made clear at the outset of the training that the union that runs
the hall, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace
Workers, had since taken sides in the Democratic nomination contest.
Its pick: Clinton.
The numbers were also impressive: About 150 people were on hand for
an event that began at 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. They had driven
from all across the state to hear a pep talk from former governor Gary
Locke, now a co-chair of Clinton’s campaign in Washington, and to get a
tutorial on Washington caucus mechanics from Jim Kainber, former
executive director of the state Democratic party and one of the
architects of the current caucus system.
“In a caucus system, the candidate who wins is the candidate whose
supporters go to these neighborhood meetings and stay the whole time,”
Locke told me before he addressed the audience. That’s true. Caucuses
are long events heavy on public debate, persuasion over the course of
several hours, and groupthink. “You can’t take things for granted,”
said Locke. “You’ve got to get ready and be prepared for it.”
As part of that preparation, the Clinton campaign had flown two
staffers in from the East Coast to help with the event, and organizers
claimed the meeting was the first caucus training event held by any
Democratic campaign in this state. (Barack Obama supporters begged to
differ. Peter Masundire, spokesman for Washington for Obama, told me
that the Obama camp has been doing caucus training here since before
the summer. “We had a couple of meetings with more than 200 people,” he
told me. “Rev. Sam B. McKinney addressed one of them. We have also done
regional trainings across the state. The statement from the Clinton
folks is inaccurate.” As for the Edwards camp, Jenny Durkan, chair of
the local Edwards campaign, did not reply to a question about local
caucus organizing efforts.)
All very interesting, but what I found most interesting about the
Clinton event is that it was happening at all. Why, I wondered,
is
any campaign getting serious, four months out, about organizing for the
Washington
caucuses?
This state’s Democratic caucuses fall on February 9, more than a
month after the hugely influential Iowa caucuses, and well after
Democratic primaries in New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada, Florida, and
South
Carolina—not to mention the “Super Tuesday” slew of
primaries that comes on February 5, when voters in more than 20 states,
comprising half of the U.S. population, will vote for their preferred
Democratic nominee. It’s more than likely that the Democratic
nomination will be sewn up by the time Washingtonians get around to
their caucusing. So why bother investing resources here?
Simply put, the answer is that the Clinton machine, famous for its
advance planning and covering of bases, doesn’t want to take any
chances. Washington will be sending 97 delegates to the Democratic
National
Convention in Denver in August, and the Clinton camp
wants all of those delegates to be Clinton backers, an outcome that can
only be assured by getting involved in the caucus
process now. It
also doesn’t want to see Clinton sweep through a series of victories in
the early primary states and then get embarrassed by a loss in
Obama-friendly Washington. And, in the unlikely event that the
Democratic nominee still isn’t clear on February 9, Clinton backers
don’t want her to be vulnerable here.
Kainber, the local caucus mastermind who has been brought onto Team
Clinton, told me that unlike primaries, which involve individuals
making choices alone in voting booths, “caucus campaigns are much more
susceptible to insurgent campaigns making inroads.” The reason is
simple, and will be familiar to anyone who has had to make a
decision as part of a crowd rather than as an individual: Minds
can be changed during a caucus meeting, labyrinthine caucus rules can
be exploited, supporters can fail the endurance test of arguing for
hours on end. “We’re not going to let that happen,” Kainber said.
Those gathered in the union hall seemed equally committed to working
the local caucuses to Clinton’s benefit. They were mostly middle-aged
and mostly female, and spent a good bit of the morning peppering the
Clinton campaign staffers with questions about how to respond to
attacks, how to build networks of caucus-goers, and how to make the
case to Democrats who are leaning toward another candidate. Kainber was
pleased.
“It’s very clear to me we’ve got an organization like I’ve never
seen,” he said. 
