Yesterday I was elected in the second round as a Hillary delegate in my state legislative district caucus — I am one of 12 Hillary delegates and now must run once more at the congressional caucus or the Washington state democratic convention to make it as a national delegate at this summer's Democratic convention in my hometown of Denver, Colorado. I plan on mounting a fantastic campaign based on the motto, "I'm going all the way with Hillary!" (Or maybe, since I'm married, that should say, "for" Hillary.)

As I sat in the packed West Seattle High gym yesterday as the entire caucus—Hillary delegates vastly outnumbered by Obama delegates—waited and waited for the credentialing committee to do its work, I spent a lot of time looking around and trying to understand why certain people wore Obama stickers and others wore Hillary stickers. When my wife and I went to our local pub for dinner later that evening, I overheard people talking about being at the caucus, and even saw the caucus chair (King County councilman Dow Constantine) walk out of the pub. As we were seated, I noticed behind Tanya a man sitting with his wife and child. He wore an Obama sticker—no doubt he had also just come from the caucus. He was a typical Seattleite—decked out in "nice" outdoor-ish clothing (REI quality), his wife had a big rock on her left hand, their child dressed nice. My educated guess was that they were at least upper-middle class. Why do they support Obama? I then remembered that among Obama's core constituencies are higher-income, well-educated individuals and students. That describes Seattle to a T, and no doubt played a big role in why he dominates the caucuses here. (Obama carried Washington's caucuses at a rate of about three to one, yet won its primary by only 6 percentage points. What does that tell us?)

Who are some of Hillary's core supporters? The elderly, less educated, lower-income/working-class, and women. These are people for whom participating in caucuses is often not an option: if you're house bound, stuck with children, working a weekend shift, can't find daycare or time off to attend an event at a fixed time and of considerable length, or are too frail to get out of the house or too faint of voice to shout to be heard at rowdy, packed caucus rooms, the caucuses disenfranchise you.

But the bigger conclusion I've drawn is that if you're well-off, well-educated, if you've weathered the last 8 years of George W. Bush without any real concern about where your next paycheck is coming from or whether you have health insurance, if you're a young student who hasn't yet had to worry about how you'll pay off your student loans or handle a mortgage or dig out of credit card debt or get your own health insurance outside of your parents' plan—then you can afford to vote on hope. You can afford to vote for Obama because his rosy message about a new kind of politics and national unity sound so great, and your personal situation doesn't demand the details he isn't providing about how he's going to do what he says or the proof he hasn't shown about whether he can accomplish his goals. These are Obama's supporters. That's why he's won in states like Washington.

Many of Hillary's supporters don't have the luxury to trust someone's rosy words without a reasonable guarantee. Their lives and livelihood are on the line. They desperately need someone who knows policy, who knows the executive and legislative processes like the back of their hand, who knows where the problems are and has detailed plans for fixing them. They can't afford to take a chance on someone so happily vague and charming as Obama. They need results and need them now. That's why she won in states like Ohio and Texas, and why she's ahead in states like Pennsylvania and Indiana.

In this fantastic Salon.com article, Sean Wilentz describes how, if Democrats held their candidate selection process like the general election—i.e., winner-take-all primaries, Hillary would be blowing Obama out of the water by now. He also argues the point about caucuses and how they are wrongly failing Hillary:

Of the two systems, caucuses are by far the less democratic — which may be why there will be exactly zero caucuses in this fall's general election. By excluding voters who cannot attend during the limited times available, the caucuses skew participation toward affluent activists and students, and against working people, mothers and caregivers, and the military. Clinton's victories, by contrast, have come overwhelmingly in states with primaries, not caucuses. Obama is certainly entitled to the delegates he won in the caucuses. But he can hardly, on that account, claim that he is clearly the popular favorite. ...

Obama has tried to reinforce his democratic bona fides by asserting his superior electability, and by claiming that Clinton's supporters are more likely to back him in November than vice versa. The polls, however, show otherwise. And even more important, the polling data on the electoral vote totals show an outcome very different from the one suggested by Obama. The latest state-by-state figures (as of late March) updated from SurveyUSA, indicate that if the election were held today, Clinton would defeat McCain in the Electoral College because of her lead in big, electoral-vote-rich states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania — and McCain would beat Obama.

The process (not to mention the media) is stacked against Clinton, but that makes me even more determined to do all I can to support her and see it through all the way to the convention. Helen Thomas thinks it's a good idea, and I always believe our elders often really do know best.