raucous caucus...

it's a BIG day here in the cowboy state. and i mean BIG. not since 1960, when JFK went on to be elected as President, has wyoming actually had a meaningful say in the Democratic nomimee. that's forty eight years folks, forty eight. so it's no surprise that people are coming out of the woodwork here for today's caucuses. we've had all three members of the clinton family, as well barack obama, speaking in the state over the last few days. not to mention front page headlines in newspapers around the globe. you'd have to live in wyoming to understand just how exciting that actually is, being that the only other big headlines we've made in recent years involved "that gay cowboy movie" and mad cow disease.

for those unfamiliar with fremont country (which i assume is everyone but me!), here is a little primer: fremont county is massive, and covers more than 9200 square miles. that's larger than the entire state of massachusetts. and in that expanse, there are only 37,000 people (the whole state only has 515,000). according to many of the "old timers" at today's caucus, the usual turnout for the democrats is about thirty people. yes, thirty. today we had 625+ officially, though unofficially the feeling was far larger. as a bonafide "young person" i was really surprised to see how many elderly people were in attendance. and while it was impossible to gauge how far everyone had traveled to stand in line this morning, there were people from the reservation, as well people from dubios (1.5hrs away) and other far flung corners of the county. impressive to say the least.

so what's the count? well, it's certainly not official but there appeared to be a slight advantage for Barack Obama. hard to tell when that many people are crammed into a small space, but that was our best guess. let's hope the official tally is announced soon though, otherwise the daddy might be forever glued to his laptop, eagerly hitting the refresh button to see just how things have changed in the last 5 seconds since he last looked!

here's to democracy!