Shortly before ten o’clock on the evening February 1, 2008, Barack Obama’s chartered 737 took off from Albuquerque International Airport bound for Boise, Idaho, where the Illinois senator was scheduled to hold a rally the next day.
In just four days voters in twenty-two states would award 1,681 Democratic National Convention delegates, of which Idaho’s caucuses would pick eighteen.
During the two-hour flight to Boise, Obama’s press handlers tried to assure traveling reporters that the candidate had not taken leave of his senses. “It may not be California,” an aide commented, “but smaller states like Idaho and Delaware add up.”
Barack Obama will become the Democratic Party’s presidential standard bearer in 2008 precisely because small states - particularly small caucus states - add up.