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It was really fascinating to see how it all went down at that particular location (somewhere in Des Moines, I believe)
After the first go round, the Biden and Richardson groups had a fair amount of supporters but were both not viable.
In round two, representatives from the "big 3" tried to woo them to their side. Apparently the Edwards group captain had determined that they needed just 10 or so votes to get an extra delegate.
The Richardson people refused to budge and felt that they could get enough votes to be viable in round two (They had about 10-15 more supporters than the Biden group).
The Biden captain tried to convince the Richardson captain to join forces with him either for Biden, or failing that, to combine and form a non-committed bloc (presumably to prevent one of the other 3 from getting the delegate).
The Richardson captain did not accept that idea and managed to peel away some folks from the Hillary camp to bring their total up to viability.
The frustrated Biden captain then directed his group to join Hillary's group.
What was fascinating was that as the Biden folks walked over to Hillary's part of the room, they had to pass by the Edwards group. Among the Edwards group was this young woman who tried to cajole these folks to join their team rather than crossing over to Hillary (and was successful on at least one occasion).
In the end, Richardson and Edwards each got 1 delegate, Hillary got 2, and Obama got 3. Biden (and the others) got none. If they had just done a straight vote right off the bat then Edwards would have had a higher total than Richardson, and Biden would not have been far behind.
Here we had a location where (I'm estimating) there were about 75 Edwards people, 50 Richardson people, 35 Biden people, and 0 Dodd people and that somehow translated to: Edwards 1, Richardson 1, Biden 0, Dodd 0.
What a truly bizarre system they have there.
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