Nevada: Keeping An Eye on the Ball
Hillary Clinton won the Nevada caucuses. The turnout was massive, well above 115,000 and far and above any pre-caucus predictions (except those of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who was closer than anyone with a prediction six months ago of 100,000).
Massive turnout did not propel Barack Obama to victory, as it did in the Iowa caucuses. In two consecutive states (New Hampshire and Nevada), large turnout has lifted Clinton and lifted her where it matters most — among core Democratic constituencies such as labor households, women, and Latinos and lower income households. Yes, Hillary had the support of most of the state’s most prominent state and county Democrats and once led by as many as 25 points two months ago. Obama did close the gap and gave Clinton a tough race. But he still lost. Wins and losses leave consequences in their wake.
In politics generally and in this race particularly, some things matter more than others. Two-straight victories for Hillary based on core party voting blocks means more than the current stir here about Nevada’s delegate allocation.
Right now, the Clinton and Obama camps are arguing over who won the most delegates in Nevada. The issue in Nevada is how delegates will be apportioned from urban centers and rural counties. Obama won 10 of Nevada’s 16 counties and carried the sparsely populated rural counties by lopsided margins and thus may collect more delegates than Hillary, even though she won the turnout and precinct battle .
Nevada Democratic Party Chair Jill Derby disputes this and she should know. Here is Derby’s statement: “Just like in Iowa what was awarded today were delegates to the county convention. No national convention delegates were awarded. The calculations of national convention delegates being circulated are based upon an assumption that delegate preferences will remain the same between now and April 2008. We look forward to our county and state conventions where we will choose the delegates for the nominee that Nevadans support.”
Delegates matter in the big picture, but this dispute is a side-show and here is why: Nevada had 25 pledged delegates to allocate and either Clinton won 13 and Obama won 12 or just the opposite occurred. One delegate either way doesn’t move the needle in any important way.
Whoever captures the Democratic nomination will need to win 2,025 delegates. Viewed in isolation, Nevada is a fraction of that amount. And a one delegate shift between 13 to 12 doesn’t change the trajectory or strategy of this race nearly as much as Hillary’s victory in the raw turnout and precinct-by-precinct contests.
Nevada is about momentum and electability. Hillary leaves Nevada with more of both than she arrived with. That’s what matters. Hillary lost two things in Iowa — the aura of inevitability and the sense that she was genuinely the most electable Democrat. With her New Hampshire and Nevada victories, Hillary can now more credibly assert she is at least as electable — and possibly more electable – than Obama.
Clinton won the union vote here by carrying 7 of the 9 casino-based at-large caucus precincts even though the Culinary Workers Union endorsed Obama and applied intense last-minute pressure to mobilize their members on Obama’s behalf. As The Bourbon Room observed before the caucuses commenced, there is every reason to believe the Culinary endorsement came too late to push Obama across the finish line first. It also means that Hillary arrived in Nevada with a pre-existing following among Culinary workers and their loyalty translated when and where it mattered most — on caucus day and at their assigned precincts. That was especially true among Latino members of Culinary. Of today’s caucus turnout, Latinos comprised 15 percent. Of those, 64 percent voted for Clinton and 26 percent for Obama.
The Latino vote in internal campaign polls before the race had a roughly 65 percent to 35 percent Clinton/Obama split. Notice, Clinton’s actual performance closely matched the pre-caucus polls but Obama’s did not.
It may be that the UNITE radio ad that described Clinton tactics here in the form of a law suit filed against the at-large precinct caucus sites as “shameless” and showing a lack of “respect” backfired on Obama. Of course, Obama’s campaign had nothing to do with the content of the ad, but Obama could have denounced the ad’s content as Clinton’s camp requested. When it did not, Obama gave rise to the perception that he agreed with the ad script which both John Edwards and team Clinton regarded as malicious and out-of-bounds.
If the Nevada race reverberates anywhere other than South Carolina, it’s in California. The Clinton campaign worked very hard to make sure Spanish radio and television were aware of her Latino outreach and the nasty nature of the UNITE radio spot. As one senior aide put it to The Bourbon Room, “we’ve been attached at the waist to Univision and Spanish radio for the last couple of days.” Pro-Clinton surrogates with deep ties to the Latino community, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaragosa and Delores Huerta chief among them, intend to leverage Hillary’s strong Latino showing and the Obama-sanctioned hardball on Spanish radio. Why? To motivate Latino voters in California, the biggest prize by far on the 22-state Super Tuesday calendar (370 pledged delegates).
For these reasons, some things matter more in Nevada than delegate allocations. The Bourbon Room has attempted to listed the most important.
Tags: Clinton, delegates, Edwards, Nevada, Obama, precincts, turnout
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Headline:Former Wal-Mart board member known for their anti-union stance sways NSEA .Educators who should be able to read, fail to review history of candidate.Union members come out to support experienced candidate who aided corporate giant to maintain low wages and benefits.Candidate with great appeal to those whom apparently choose poverty over change,the core of the Democratic party .
OMG-We’ve been on the street and on the phone and talking her up at work!! We did it!! Go Hillary Go!
Yeah, I’m sure I’ll start trusting your analysis when you start referring to ‘wins and losses,’ instead if ‘wins and loses.’ Those will surely be the ones that actually matter.
Haha! And when you stop using ‘Whomever’ as the subject of a sentence!
With such a huge illegal alien population in Nevada, how many misused our Democratic process? Without needing any proof of citizenship and the fact that the culinary union and the entertainment industry is distinquished by a massive need to sign on new union members. There is no doubt in my mind the law was violated because once you break one law, to trespass in our country, no judicial form called Declaration of citizenship executed, will stop foreign nationals under the penalty of perjury.
Nevada may have been a win for Clinton, but in the light of day, and with time, I think people will realize that Obama is doing much better than he is “supposed” to be doing. In fact when he is nominated, the pundits looking back will cite Nevada as one of the obvious indicators of the result.
What a sad day for this country. Has this country learned nothing from the past two decades? Lets try something new instead of continually making the same mistakes over and over. This has made me decide to vote republican if she actually gets the nomination. Her husband actually had the ability to take out osama bin laden years before 9/11 and did nothing and everyone makes him out to be holier than thou. Where exactly did she get 35 years experience being married to someone does not give you experience she couldn’t even keep him interested in her intimately and yet now that he can see another opportunity to mess up the country he professes his love to her. What a joke.
While it is true that Hillary had a greater percentage of votes in Nevada, it isn’t the percentage that counts. To para-phrase a theme from an earlier election, “It’s the delegates stupid.” At this point I see pretty much everyone reporting that Obama won 13 delegated to Hillary’s 12, so Obama really is the winner. That said, the difference is so small, in reality, just like New Hampshire we basically have another tie. If this keeps up, it looks like it will be the Democratic party bosses and/or their “super delegates” decide who is the nominee and not the people.
Democratic women and Latinos do not–in and of themselves–a winning November coalition make.
And therein lies the problem … Hillary Clinton’s inherited and narrow support among already committed Democratic voters makes a general election victory very iffy.
You need appeal to independents and a certain number of Republicans.
Even worse, the Clintons’ polarizing figures make the prospect of their governing in 2009-2012 unappetizing indeed.
Accomplishing an agenda for change takes a village, not a round up of usual suspects.
Ethnic (and racial) prejudices are a peculiar thing, as the Clintons’ race-coded campaign is showing.
I remember in 1988, when the punditocracy–faced with the prospect of a Democratic candidacy of an eloquent and empowering governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, openly questioned whether someone with a vowel at the end of their last name could win a national election.
We not only ended up that year with a candidate named Michael Dukakis (also with an ethnic last name, but no vowel), who was trounced by George H.W. Bush, a favorite of Hillary Clinton (check out her Web site).
Today the Clintons and their surrogates are using thinly veiled race coding against another candidate, while hoping to enlist Latinos in their cause.
Question is, if they are willing to do that against one group today, can any minority group member really feel the Clintons’ will protect them, push comes to shove?
Espero que me entienden.
Martin Edwin “Mick” Andersen
P.S. Hillary, tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, not Lyndon B. Johnson Day
Racist blacks will all vote for Obama. Sexist females will all vote for Hillary. The economically envious will vote for Edwards. All who put their politics above the security of our country will vote democrat. All those diluted to believe “he lied” and that we need to impoverish our country to counter global warming, will vote democrat. Those who would give illegal immigrants a free and undeserved ticket to the American dream, will vote democrat. Those who vote for their living, will vote democrat. So folks, consider your primary vote very carefully. The world as we know it is in the balance.
Winning is a group effort.
Hillary Clinton’’s narrow and inherited support among already-committed Democratic voters makes a general election victory very iffy.
You need to appeal to independents and a certain number of Republicans.
Accomplishing an agenda for change takes a village, not a round-up of usual suspects.
Only Barack Obama has shown any promise of making a change agenda a community, and a winning, effort.
Martin Edwin Andersen
Churchton, Maryland
[...] Nevada: Keeping An Eye on the Ball Hillary Clinton won the Nevada caucuses. The turnout was massive, well above 115,000 and far and above any pre-caucus […] [...]
Hillary Clinton, will say ANYTHING do ANYTHING to get elected. She has run a shameless campaign, not just in NV, but everywhere. The future of the country is just that the future, not the past. She needs to stop the dirty tricks, the back room deals and the underhanded way she and the former Pres. are acting and campaigning. As a Republican voter, i actually hope she wins the nod by her party so we can kick her butt in the general election…….
Mr. Garrett,
The tone of this article is as if it is written from someone in the Clinton Campaign.
The definition of a win in this race is who gets the most delegates. If who is going to be rewarded with the most delegates is still undecided, then the Nevada caucas results should be reports as: too close to call, yet to be determined, we don’t know yet, etc.
I do not support either of these two candidates. I do want the media to report what is really happening on the ground accurately.
Thank you,
David R. HIll
NEWS FLASH, BEGALA AND CARVILLE JOINING CLINTON CAMPAIGN ( NOT!!!!!). COME ON, MAN UP MAJOR, YOU KNOW YOU WERE WRONG AND YOUR SOURCES WERE WRONG. BY NOT ADMITTING IT, IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE YOUR MOMMY TOLD YOU WERE NEVER WRONG EVEN WHEN YOU WERE. STILL A FAN, BUT MAN UP ON THIS.
I AM A SIXTY YEAR OLD WHITE MALE. AND WHILE I BELIVE THAT SEN. OBAMA WOULD BE GOOD, I BELIVE SEN. CLINTON WOULD BE BETTER FOR OUR NATION, SHE KNOWS BEST TO HOW TO BRING THE DIFFECT BACK TO THE POSITIVE SIDE, BEST ON HEALTH CARE AND HAS AS GOOD A UNDER STANDING OF THE PEOPLE OF THE U. S. “VOTE SEN. HILLARY CLINTON 2008.” THANK YOU.
Obama’s momentum is real, BUT I’m baffled by the reasoning behind it. Hillary has walked him in each and every debate, and yet I constantly hear people praise his eloquence. Furthermore, he has recently taken up an affectation that makes him sound like a revivalist preacher. I prefer authenticity over such chicanery and I would hope that people would choose the same. If you have to fake your mannerisms to stir voters to your corner, then substance has no place in the debate.
In the end, most people are lemmings willing to follow rather than hold to their convictions and entertain independent thought. We saw what a catastrophe voting for the candidate who you’d like to have a beer with drew. Let’s not be so flippant with our choice this time around.