The Washington caucus tomorrow will be a nightmare

I’ve just finished about two hours of making phone calls for Obama in Washington state, ahead of tomorrow’s caucuses.  They are going to be a nightmare, and Hillary may win them because of it.  Be on guard for that.

More after the jump.

Washington has caucuses tomorrow at 1 p.m. and a primary on Feb. 19.  The Republicans choose half of their delegates at the caucuses and half at the primary.  The Democrats, though, choose all of their delegates (actually delegates to a series of later state conventions) at the caucuses tomorrow.  The primary is just a beauty contest.  The problem that I encountered in my calling is that a lot of voters, many of whom received their absentee ballots for the primary, think that the primary is what matters rather than the caucus.  So, they aren’t going to show up tomorrow.  Hopefully, Obama’s huge rally today will have reached them, but there’s reason to doubt that — look at the problems with the LA County “double bubble” ballots last Tuesday.

We’re going to see a lot of disenfranchised Democrats tomorrow.  Which candidate will take advantage of that?  I don’t know, but it would not shock me if, despite greater support in the state for Obama, Hillary were to win.

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Here’s another thing you haven’t seen in the media.  John McCain’s sewing up the nomination could mean that Hillary wins, because voters (say, in Washington state) can cross over and vote in the Democratic contest now that the Republican race is virtually over.  I assume that they can read the polls as well as we can and would prefer to run against Hillary.  So prepare to see the return volley of the Michigan “vote for Mitt” strategy coming back to bite us.

It will be interesting to see whether either of these stories play in the national media.  My guess is no.