Obama's Winning Because of the Caucuses

Joe Trippi has an interesting take on why Obama is winning...

Obama's overall delegate lead: 117

Obama's delegate advantage in caucuses: 129 delegates

The Clinton campaign's decision to "skip" the caucuses by not matching Obama's investment in local organizing, may be the biggest political strategy blunder since the ignore-the-swiftboat call.

Idaho. Maine. Texas. Nebraska. These are not obvious "Obama states" yet he grabbed big delegate leads in each of these caucuses.

Why? Because Obama's campaign embraced bottom-up campaigning. Because it pumped money into local organizers. Because it gave tools to precinct captains and volunteers.

While Obama also ran television advertising and leveraged endorsers, Clinton's campaign is marked by its top-down messaging and its use of local political machines. Obama perfected bottom-up organizing - and the caucus system rewarded him.

This bottom-up strategy was clearly visible the past two weeks when the campaigns were trying to get their delegates to the county convention that will take place on Saturday. Clinton relied on robocalls, while the Obama campaign set up a website where volunteers could log onto and get a list of people to call.