On Saturday in Seattle, thousands who have never done anything political will attend Democratic Party caucuses to register a vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Other newbies will attend Republican caucuses -- though there may only 10 or so such folks in blue-as-blue-comes Seattle.
On Saturday in Seattle the majority of the state's 97 Democratic Party presidential delegates will be awarded.
On Saturday in Seattle we'll see if Obama or Clinton gain the momentum coming out of Super Tuesday.
On Saturday in Seattle 16 20-something University of Washington students will be at the caucuses and will chronicle the events. We'll be online and we hope you'll join us at least part of the day.
I'm a professor and head of journalism at the University of Washington. A team of students and I are covering the presidential caucuses and primaries around the Northwest. Our coverage is being posted here: seattlepoliticore.org
On Super Tuesday we covered a Coeur d'Alene, Idaho caucus that overflowed the North Idaho College gymnasium. In 2000 the caucus site had 125 Democrats caucus; in 2004 it was roughly 500. This year they closed the doors at 1250 and turned away a couple hundred. Here's a short video produced by one of my students that captures some moments in our trip from Seattle to CdA and back.
On Thursday we covered Hillary Clinton's overflow, 5000-capacity event on the Seattle waterfront:
Today (Friday) we covered Barack Obama's overflow, 18000-capacity event at Key Arena. Another couple thousand were turned away:
On Saturday we'll be at nearly 10 caucus sites in the Seattle area, most of them on the Democratic side. Clinton and Obama's supporters will make their cases, and we'll be there to capture it in video and pictures. We'll do interviews, chronicle noteworthy developments, track down leads, and we'll be there to the bitter end of the results in the late afternoon.
My students aren't hard-core, cynical journalists. They're young people taking their first real steps into covering and caring about politics. Almost to a person, they've never voted and certainly never attended a caucus. They bring that wonder-of-it-all, eyes-opening perspective to what they capture in words, pictures, and video.
On the second day of class, dkos front-page blogger McJoan joined us to talk about blogging. My students left that conversation sky high and since then some have begun to blog here. You might have come across them -- they're the ones feeling their way into the arena of politics. They're young and naive, but they want to learn. And they care. That's why they've been running on adrenaline all week, starting in Idaho and continuing through the Clinton and Obama visits the past two days.
If you can spare a minute, we'd love to have you join us at seattlepoliticore.org in the next 36 hours. As their prof, I can tell you that site visits by folks like you all make their day and give them a huge shot in the arm.