some kind of humorous history of iowa.  "iowa has been at rest since the seventh day..." economy, 1890, etc.

"jim, let's moe it along."

asking crowd who has had face-to-face contact with candidates.

30% have had conversations with a candidate.

susie peterson (i think) for hillary group chair, carl sutton for the edwards group, etc.

dividing up into preference groups now.

corners for clinton, obama, edwards.  others get spots, by the door, etc.

"undecided folks just hang out in the middle, and there will be folks coming by to vie you to their corners."

talking to an undeclared by the door.  he likes the second tier folks.

sales pitch: "i got so disillusioned four years ago when i found out that this country never elects senators..."

cheers from another group in the background.

i think they're counting up the bigger groups.

middle-aged obama guy in MTV sweatshirt makes the pitch, says over half at this caucus will go with obama.

lady asks, "what about experience?"

response: "he has the same experience as abraham lincoln had when he got elected."

lady (jokingly): "and he got shot! sorry."

random guy in the hall, apropos of nothing.

not sure which group this is, biden?

richardson guy making the pitch.  not sure if it's just who CSPAN is following, but the richardson folks definitely seem to be workin' it.  good for them.

trying to pick up the last undecideds.

apparently for which candidate gets 2 delegates, clinton or edwards.

the richardson lady is still working it.

dodd, kucinich, biden and richardson.

need 57 per group (!) to be viable.

15 minutes to re-align.

"nobody can leave!"

not just getting troops out of iraq, but who is the face to the rest of the world, obama...

edwards standing up for working class, etc.

obama and edwards folks debating each other in front of the biden preference group. obama guy says he was edwards until campaign didn't respond to a question of his.

they just cut to a shot where one of the campaigns was trying to recruit someone, and they had a kid translating it into sign language for him.

now that's what i call organized.

77, 78... 89, 90... 93... 101... 108, 109, 110... for edwards preference group. wait, did we count her twice?  have everybody walk out in the hall and walk back in...

obama group 149 and counting. cheer went up from another corner: possibly the clinton group?

cheering from another corner - possibly the obama group has finished.

asking if everyone has re-aligned from richardson, dodd, kucinich, biden and the two uncommitteds.

three viable groups, now doing the delegate math.

final count of caucus-goers:
186 obama
116 edwards
74 clinton

"anyone else who wants to be a delegate?"

6 total for this precinct.

3 for obama

2 for edwards

1 for clinton

if you want to be a delegate you have to attend county convention in march, etc.

anyone want to be on the committee on committees?

they're approving the slate of delegates to the county nominating convention, etc. platform committee, and something called, no joke, the "committee on committees."

"the platform committee's a hoot. if you want to see people really jumping up and down, get on the platform committee."

looks like most of the people going to be delegates are the same folks running the caucus, because nobody else wants to. big surprise there.

by this point there are only maybe 40 to 50 people left in the room, from the original total of 376.

OK, i'm done liveblogging.

OK, one more.

one of the obama organizers is now presenting a resolution that organized bike rides should not be prohibited by local governments, and people are debating some of the provisions.

in just ten minutes we've gone from leader of the free world to cracks in county roads...

on CSPAN 2...

wow, even though they just do a straight ballot without all the preference group stuff, they've just now got the totals and are calling them into to central.

doesn't seem like a bright person on the other end: the guy had to repeat his phone number like 5 times.

this is carroll, IA, at des moines community college.

huck cleaned up here, with like 88 votes. mittens only got 24. 7 for ron paul, and he had to add 1 for alan keyes onto the official tally sheet. but none for duncan hunter...

(i'm tellin' ya, keyes' candidacy is gonna catch fire! he's got the joementum...)