Overhauling The Primary System

Considering that the Democratic primaries in 2012 won't be much more than a formality, I wondered whether or not there would be a strong urge inside the DNC to just move on and make no meaningful changes to the primary system, despite the epic car wreck of 2008. The other strain of thought is that, because 2012 will have no winners and losers, it's easier than ever to change the system because stakeholders will have less of an impetus to game it. Looks like the reformers won out:

Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina will lead the Democratic Change Commission, which is scheduled to report its findings no later than Jan. 1, 2010. The commission, which is largely comprised of Democrats who supported Mr. Obama (and a few who backed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in last year's contentious primary season), will review and streamline the 2008 calendar.

"This commission will focus on reform that improves the presidential nominating process," Mr. Kaine said in a statement, "to put voters first and ensure that as many people as possible can participate."

Comprised of 37 members, the commission has this mission:

The Democratic Change Commission will address three issues: 1) changing the window of time during which primaries and caucuses may be held 2) reducing the number of superdelegates and 3) improving the caucus system.

Let's break down these issues separately. Kaine is setting a marker that no caucus or primary can be held before February 1 of the calendar year, which I think makes sense. Sadly, he's still holding to this front-loaded structure, where a first wave goes between February 1 and March 1. I'd rather see a rotating regional primary rather than a system which encourages practically every state beyond the first tier to go on March 1. Not to mention the fact that the DNC couldn't get Michigan and Florida to hold to these dictates last year.

On delegates, the wording is a little vague, but the resolution provides for "a significant reduction of the number of unpledged party leader and elected official (PLEO) delegates in order to enlarge the role and influence of primary and caucus voters in the presidential nominating process." That's a solid principle, and ultimately I'd like to see the superdelegates phased out, or at least not phased in until a second ballot so that the voters rule first. Delegate allocation formulas will get a makeover as well, and good, because one Congressional district shouldn't be favored over another based on whether or not they have even-numbered or odd-numbered delegates.

Finally, on caucuses, there is talk about maximizing "the opportunity for full participation by Democratic voters," and I agree. Maine has an absentee-ballot system for caucuses, and that should be the model. I know many people believe that caucuses are inherently marginalizing and should be abandoned, but they hold value as party-building events, and that decision should be up to the inidividual state parties.

Anyway, I'm glad we're talking about this very early, to allow for the range of debate prior to the next contested primary election.

Returning The Party To The People

I hate to get off the McCain house train (and really, I hate to), this is a great move by Team Obama.

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign will call next week for the creation of a commission to revise the rules for selecting a presidential nominee in 2012, with a goal of reducing the power of superdelegates, whose role became a major point of contention during the long battle for the Democratic nomination between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The commission also will be urged to redraw the nominating calendar for 2012 to avoid starting the primaries and caucuses so early, and also to look specifically at ensuring more uniform rules and standards for those caucuses.

Up for grabs: no more Super Tuesdays, moving back the calendar to at least February, adding absentee voting to caucuses, and reducing superdelegate power.

Primary reform isn't a sexy topic, but given the clusterfuck that we endured this spring it's absolutely essential to rebuild the stature of the party. Obama is doing the right thing, and by the way the Clinton campaign is involved in this as well.

This shows Obama is listening to the rank and file. I'm as encouraged by that as almost anything he's done so far.

Hey Kids, Let's Put On A Caucus

It looks increasingly that Michigan will be re-voting in a caucus process.

A member of the DNC's Rules And Bylaws Committee--the committee that stripped Florida and Michigan of its delegates for moving their primaries before February 5th--told me that Michigan plans to get out of its uncounted delegate problem by announcing a new caucus in the next few days.

"They want to play. They know how to do caucuses," the DNC source said. "That was their plan all along, before they got cute with the primary."

This is a good thing. Dean made this happen, by the way, by basically saying "either a new vote or nothing," which makes it pretty hard for Clinton to object. Sure, this is a caucus, but may be a CINO (caucus in name only). There are a lot of meanings of the word "caucus." In Maine it includes absentee balloting, for example. "Caucus" essentially means that the party pays for it instead of the state, and in cash-strapped Michigan that's the only way it's going to happen.

I want an organizing opportunity for Democrats in Michigan. I think it'll be crucial as we head into the fall.

As for Florida, it's a different situation. Both candidates were on the ballot, 1.7 million came out to vote, everything was basically equal, the Republicans drove the process of moving up the election, and they're not going to pay the $25 million to hold a new one (sure, Clinton and Obama can hold a bake sale to raise the money, but who's going to run the election?). Marc Schmitt has a very interesting idea.

Here's the answer, and it's a little off the wall: He should offer a major concession. Agree to seat the Florida delegates from the January primary, along with a do-over caucus in Michigan. Don't concede the full legitimacy of the Florida primary, but just acknowledge that all the candidates were on the ballot and the expense and political cost of a do-over is too high. Seating the Florida delegation would be conditional on a do-over caucus in Michigan.

That immediately concedes to Clinton a gain of somewhere between 29 and 40 delegates. (She won 113 delegates in the disputed primary, Obama 71, and Edwards 13.) So instead of being 154 delegates in the hole, she would be behind by 112-125, and after Mississippi and Wyoming, it's likely to be more.

It's hard to see the logic by which Clinton could turn that offer down. There's clearly a marked difference in legitimacy between a Soviet-style primary with only one candidate on the ballot (Michigan) and one in which the candidates simply agreed not to campaign and name-recognition prevailed. And conceding a primary in a large state that Clinton won 50-33 seems -- is -- quite magnanimous. How would Clinton insist on a do-over in both states, or in seating Michigan as well?

But it's also devastating to Clinton: It denies her the opportunity and momentum of a second victory in Florida and the claim that she won both big swing states legitimately, one of them twice. It forces her to defend a caucus (which she never wins, even if it's more like a primary) in a state that's probably a little closer to Wisconsin in temperament than it is to Ohio, as well as more heavily African-American.

Most of all, it makes the math finite. It's the equivalent of saying, "We'll spot you 40 delegates -- now quit spinning and do the math." The math then is not impossible, but it would still require huge wins in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and in that Michigan caucus. Her biggest advantage right now is the ambiguity that allows her to spin all sorts of unlikely scenarios as "paths to the nomination."

That'd be a hell of a ballsy move by Obama. But we need some legitimacy in this process. Letting every state have a say, literally every one, except one of the biggest is untenable. This is an excellent compromise idea. It tightens up the math without favoring one candidate over the other, actually. Obama gets benefits and still has the chance for a knockout blow in PA or MI, while Clinton gets a 40-delegate boost and gives her a real opportunity to catch up in her own right.

Stay tuned...

Changing The Rules Midstream

This is kind of the last straw:

The Texas Democratic Party warned Thursday that election night caucuses scheduled for next Tuesday could be delayed or disrupted after aides to Hillary Clinton threatened to sue over the party's complicated delegate selection process [...]

Democratic sources said both campaigns have made it clear that they might consider legal options over the complicated delegate selection process, which includes both a popular vote and evening caucuses. But the sources made it clear that the Clinton campaign in particular had warned of an impending lawsuit.

"Both campaigns have made it clear that they would go there if they had to, but I think the imminent threat is coming from one campaign,'' said one top Democratic official, referring to the Clinton campaign. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

Another Democratic official who was privvy to the discussions confirmed that Clinton representatives made veiled threats in a telephone call this week.

"Officials from Sen. Clinton's campaign at several times throughout the call raised the specter of 'challenging the process,' the official said. "The call consisted of representatives from both campaigns and the Democratic Party.''

First, Clinton surrogates sued to close all at-large caucuses in Nevada. They argued to seat Michigan and Florida delegates after all candidates boycotted the state. They have disparaged the caucus process itself. And now threatening to sue over the Texas process.

Whether or not these are legitimate claims and concerns is not germane. For the record, the way Texas chooses their delegates is screwy as hell. But in every single one of these cases, the processes were well-known for months and months to all parties before the voting. There was a time to raise objections and that was early last year. A serious candidate would have not only known about these things, they would have worked to change them to their advantage if they had a problem. I think the Nevada Democratic Party or the Texas Democratic Party would have given a lot of weight to what the putative front-runner had to say. Some might not have liked it, but they could have made this work for them, or made it work better for them. Or they could have taken the stance of the Obama campaign and WORKED WITHIN THE SYSTEM. Last March or April, the Clinton campaign could have easily made this one staffer's goal.

The result is that the Clinton campaign looks like they want to change the rules in the middle of the game, because they do. It does nothing for their likability, and in the end it won't matter. The Nevada courts threw out the case, the caucuses continue, Texas is not going to be bullied, and Michigan and Florida are only going to be seated if they aren't decisive (for the record I think they won't be). The Clinton campaign just looks small and petty.

(And I just saw the lowest kind of fearmongering ad, one that could easily be used by John McCain in November, being used by Clinton, about "what's going to happen if the phone rings at 3am, will your children be safe?" Thanks for that one, team.)

UPDATE: The "Texas two-step" has been in place since 1968. FWIW, both campaigns are denying any intention to sue.

Is Bill Clinton Crazy?

I really don't understand this strategy by the campaign trying to win the Democratic nomination of demeaning Democrats who voted for other Democrats.

Of his wife's recent travails, [Bill Clinton] said, "the caucuses aren't good for her. They disproportionately favor upper-income voters who, who, don't really need a president but feel like they need a change."

It's as if they take personally everyone's vote against them. And do upper-income voters not have the ability to care about their country? What the hell is up with this?

Caucuses have been taking place for many decades, they are party-building events, this year with the tremendous turnout they are going to pay huge dividends in November. Everybody who went to the caucus had their information captured by the state parties, and they can use them to turn out volunteers and activists. They aren't all the "idle rich," either. Caucuses are actually a good thing, and if like Maine they all had absentee ballots attached there wouldn't be any disenfranchisement problems at all. Call for changes in the system if you wish, but please, don't denigrate Democrats who vote for Democrats. That's completely idiotic.

Every State Counts

I live in California, a big, diverse state and an electoral prize. If I lived in one of the two dozen states that Hillary Clinton has claimed don't count in the nomination process, I'd be offended. Actually, I still am.

Solis Doyle's departure capped a rough weekend for Clinton after she lost the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska, Washington state, Maine and the Virgin Islands to Obama.

She said she never expected to do well in any of those contests, even though she had been favored to win Maine. Clinton repeated her criticism that the caucus system is undemocratic and caters mostly to party activists.

As for Louisiana, "You had a very strong and very proud African- American electorate, which I totally respect and understand," Clinton said.

She noted that the states she won on Super Tuesday were all states Democrats must win to succeed in the general election. Many of the states Obama won that night, such as Alaska and North Dakota, would not be competitive for Democrats next November, she said.

Clinton was up 57-10 in Maine at one point. Furthermore, their caucuses allowed absentee balloting, which kind of blows away that whole "undemocratic" argument (which I didn't hear her say a lot before Iowa or Nevada). "Caucus" is another word for "election paid for and run by the Party," and the rules are often very different from one to another. They are party-building exercises, important for the Democratic infrastructure, and most crucial, IN PLACE AND WELL-KNOWN before Clinton ever got into the race, so it's not exactly a shocker.

Furthermore, you do tend to campaign the way you govern. So Clinton is essentially saying that she'd only care about the big Democratic states in her Administration, is that what I can gather? I feel like we need to build the party everywhere so that we're not confined to this narrow set of states, and Obama's activism in these currently red states is going to leave infrastructure in place for decades. One looks like he's running to be the President of all Americans; the other is running to be President of elites. I mean, that's certainly what it looks like, and I REALLY don't want a President denigrating the work of the activists of his or her own party.

Last night at a forum Sen. Clinton claimed that Obama might not be willing to fight for Democratic values. Should we ask Democrats in Maine about that? Washington? Nebraska? Louisiana?

That really irks me.

UPDATE: Apparently Wisconsin's largely white, working-class female vote doesn't matter either.

Huck-Mentum!

NBC News reports that Mike Huckabee wins the early-morning West Virginia caucuses, 52-47 over Mitt Romney in the second round of voting (McCain lost out after the first round). Huckabee doesn't like to call himself the spoiler, but I think it's pretty clear that he just cost West Virginia for Romney.

Of course, if Huckabee takes a little here and Romney a little there, maybe this race gets extended. Not gonna happen, but a guy can dream...

UPDATE: Looks like there was some wheeling and dealing to deny Romney the victory. This might have been coordinated, but also activists are generally just more knowledgeable about politics, and know that stopping Romney would help McCain.

Hold On, Everybody

So there were two big charges coming from the Obama campaign out of Nevada: that there were numerous incidents of voter suppression and intimidation at the local precinct sites that swung the vote to Clinton; and, that they actually won Nevada (the front page of Obama's campaign website has a graphic showing the Nevada results with "Obama 13 delegates, Clinton 12 delegates"). Based on being there and talking to a lot of precinct captains and people in the know, I can speak to both of these issues.

First, the delegate count. When I spoke with Jill Derby in the immediate aftermath of the caucuses, she basically tried to dismiss the Obama campaign statement, by saying that no national delegates had been selected and that would be determined by an election at the state party convention in April. I pressed her further a little later, asking her essentially "All things being equal, assuming he remained in the race, would Obama wind up with more DNC delegates?" And she refused to give a straight answer. I later learned that Derby is pretty much known as a Clinton supporter, and she was pretty much trying to tell me "We'll make the delegate count reflect the will of the voters." But now, the NSDP has backtracked on that.

"No national convention delegates were awarded. That said, if the delegate preferences remain unchanged between now and April 2008, the calculations of national convention delegates being circulated by the Associated Press are correct. We look forward to our county and state conventions where we will choose the delegates for the nominee that Nevadans support."

On the face of this, many have made the argument that it invalidates the caucus process. I agree, but it's in the same way that the electoral college subverts the national election process. States weight their caucuses to get candidates out to the rural areas (in Nevada's case, it's really a rounding error that gives a little more importance to areas outside of Las Vegas and Clark County). In the aftermath of the election, they can't just renege on that. I agree with Chris Bowers that the media and the conventional wisdom can't just dismiss the real delegate count because they want to. Unfortunately, they are.

The other thing is that you have to understand the significance of the caucuses for party building. A primary is controlled (and paid for) by the state; a caucus is controlled (and paid for) by the parties. The Democrats had 115,800 Nevadans turn out; in 2004 they had 9,000. If you can get 116,000 people out to what amounts to a Democratic Party meeting, you can capture their information, excite them, and turn them out on Election Day. In states where the Democratic Party isn't very organized and politics is not part of the DNA (and believe me, that's Vegas to a T), caucuses actually play a very important role. They're HORRIBLE at picking a President, but they are great at strengthening the party.

The downside to this, especially in a state like Nevada with new caucuses and inexperienced caucus-goers, is that they're a disorganized mess. And this brings me to the charges of voting rights violations. Matt Stoller covers a fair bit of this today, and I was in the same caucus room as him and talked to a lot of the same people after the caucus, so our takes will track somewhat. The Nevada State Democratic Party, in setting up these caucuses, had to find over 1,700 precinct chairs to run them. There aren't 1,700 nonpartisan activists sitting around Nevada ready to run caucuses, so the chairs ended up being people who supported one candidate or another, and I would guess that a disproportionate amount supported Clinton. This is not to say that those precinct chairs cheated or anything, but the perception of bias was already ingrained before any votes were cast (a lot of those organizers ended up coming in from California and Colorado, too). In addition, the state put multiple precnicts on the same site (there were 1,700-some precincts and only 560 sites), NEVER TOLD THE VOTERS, and expected people who had never caucused before to show up and implicitly know where to go, leading to more chaos. Furthermore, the precinct CAPTAINS (those tasked with organizing voters for their respective candidates) weren't entirely knowledgeable about the process either. But they were told that they had to be assertive in working the rules. And many of them were.

There was a lot of hoopla surrounding the at-large caucuses on the Strip for the employees of the big hotels. Piecing together the evidence, it's clear that there were strong efforts by the labor leaders within the Culinary Workers union to get their folks to vote for Obama. It's also clear that invited a backlash. The picture at the top is from a sign, "I Support My Union, And I Support Hillary," that was paid for by the Clinton campaign, and handed out to Culinary Workers union members. AFSMCE organizers from Iowa and all over the country were organizing inside the union and getting people to caucus for Clinton. In addition, I heard that the rank and file of the union wasn't all that happy with their leadership to begin with, as dues have gone up without an accompanying increase in wages. The result of the Strip caucuses were that Hillary won 7 out of 9, when the projection was 2 to 1 for Obama.

But there WAS a real-world impact to the lawsuit brought by Clinton allies to shut down the Strip caucuses, and particularly Bill Clinton's comments that those employees' votes would "count five times as much" as regular Nevadans. This is a complete and utter falsehood, but coming from a former President, it had weight. Apparently that soundbite was played over and over on Las Vegas TV and radio. There were statements from the teacher's union that the lawsuit was designed to protect voter rights, when the impact would have only been to shut down the Strip caucuses and prevent people from participating. They were making wild claims about how all employees would get to vote at their workplace, which weren't true. And on the ground, people got that message, and the Culinary Workers union were absolutely painted as the caricature of "powerful union bosses" trying to steal the vote. So Hillary's success in Clark County must be attributed to that in part.

Like the rest of the media, I went to one of the casinos to observe a caucus (Hillary beat Barack at the Wynn, 189-187). It was fascinating and hilarious and I can't wait to write about it, and I don't regret it. But the media's obsession with those caucuses diverted attention from all of the other ones in the Vegas area. And this is where most of the alleged voter intimidation and voter suppression took place (See here, here, and here). With more transparency and a media spotlight, I think there would have been less opportunity.

But let's be clear about these charges. In many cases, the rules weren't properly explained. Here's Stoller:

The central claim of the Obama camp is that Clinton-affiliated chairs were telling their people to show up at 11:30 and then shutting doors to caucus-goers at 11:30 instead of 12. Aside from the fact that party rules conflict with each other on this point, many of the caucus goers really wanted the event to start and end quickly, because they were working. In the middle of the caucus I attended, about a third of the room emptied out because of a shift change (their votes had been counted). In other words, there were good reasons to shut the doors at 11:30.

I heard one report of an Obama precinct captain trying to get the doors shut at 11:30. In truth, the precinct chair had the discretion to keep them open. So it was very muddled.

There are other charges, like voter cards moved into the Hillary camp (it appears the party didn't expect the high turnout and didn't have enough cards or voter registration forms), Hillary caucus-goers attempting to be counted in different precincts on the same site, precinct captains telling caucus goers for non-viable candidates that they had to go home instead of their right to make a new choice, electioneering in places where it was forbidden, etc. My take on all of this is that there were a lot of sharp elbows thrown. Supporters of each candidate were very assertive and trying to do their best. The Hillary precinct captains may have been a little more prepared and a little more experienced for this kind of hardball politics. But that's not universally true. Here's my favorite on-the-ground story from desmoulins at MyDD, an Edwards precinct captain (who I talked a lot of this over with last night):

As the end of the first allignment approached, Clinton had 80, Obama 46, Edwards 13, Kucinic 2 and uncommitted 2. Each of the 3 campaigns made a short pitch for the 2 Kucinic supporters who then said they would come to Edwards if it would make us viable. The uncommitted voters also agreed to come if it would make us viable, as did one Obama voter and one Clinton voter. I was now only three voters short, but I could not let the 15 minutes expire without at least getting 3 more uncommitted (because members of viable groups cannot reallign under NV rules). So I went to the Clinton group and explained that if they helped me reach viability, they could deprive Obama of at least 2 delegates without hurting their own cause. I urged them to move at least 3 people to uncommitted, which would at least make it mathematically possible for us to reach the 22 we needed for viability.

To my surprise, the Clinton captain had no idea what I was talking about and could not understand either why they should move supporters to uncommitted, or why I would suggest that most of the Edwards supporters would go to Obama if we failed to be viable. I explained quickly and had more or less convinced her when time ran out. I pointed out she had to do it now and that if my math was wrong, she could get her voters back in the 2nd 15 minutes. She agreed but only one Clinton supporter volunteered to move. As I pleaded for her and one of the two others assisting her to move themselves, the Obama captain quite rightly began to point out that time was up. (I had told the Obama captain I would come to their group if I were not viable, but to her credit, she was not put off that I was trying to help Edwards at her expense.)

You had a lot of inexperienced caucus goers and inexperienced precinct captains and inexperienced precinct chairs, and there's no question that some people took advantage of that opportunity. The idea that it impacted the vote one way or the other is just not very realistic. Clinton's precinct organizers were more ORGANIZED, and they took advantage of a lot of opportunities. Is that suppression? I can't say that it is, really. I'd be more concerned by the Barack Hussein Obama robocall, if I were the Obama people.

What I do know is that the Obama campaign taking this up as a rallying cry has the potential to be very dangerous. If they are trying to leverage an idea that the Clinton campaign cheated into winning with black voters in South Carolina, that could get extremely ugly. I would hope they would step back from the brink. And the same with the Clinton campaign; Bill Clinton saying that he personally heard a union rep threaten an employee is just not credible. This plays into a growing racial gap that I saw on display a little bit at the Wynn casino caucus. It's a scorched-earth strategy for the Obama campaign to call up the ghosts of 2000 in Florida and 2004 in Ohio in the context of a Democratic primary where the allegations are murky. It will cause a severe rift in the party and could have implications into November. I don't think anybody comes out of Nevada looking good, sadly. The election has gotten very high school and petty, as issues have been pushed to the side. This has the feeling of a missed moment.

Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail In Las Vegas

I'm still actually trying to process what I saw today. I attended the at-large caucus at the Wynn Hotel and Casino. Suffice to say (for now) that it was the most surreal political event in American history, and I'm trying to be understated. Imagine a costume party with politics mixed in.

For the record, there are a lot of allegations flying around about voter intimidation and voter suppression and all of that, on the Clinton AND on the Obama side (the Edwards folks are saying they just didn't have the people and didn't have the money). To be clear, I saw none of that at the Wynn, though of course, there was so much media there nobody would have been able to get away with it.

I'll give a full report probably tomorrow.

P.S. The Nevada State Democratic Party is reporting that turnout is above 114,000 caucus attendees, with 88% of precincts reporting. That is a ridiculously high number. Something like 9,000 people voted in 2004. Another good day for Democrats.

P.S.S. The Obama campaign is claiming that they're going to end up with 13 delegates to Clinton's 12, because he outperformed Clinton in rural areas of the state. Indeed, in everything but Clark and Washoe Counties (Vegas and Reno), Obama won 55-45%. I have no idea if this is true, but considering the delegate count is what actually MATTERS, you'd think that this would be reported.

P.S.S.S. OK, I just spoke with Jill Derby, the head of the Nevada State Democratic Party. Regarding the Obama claim that he'll actually get more delegates out of this, essentially that's spin. Derby said that the caucuses are an "expression of the support of Nevadans today." Around 11,000 delegates were elected today. That will be winnowed down at county conventions and eventually at the state convention in May to the 25 that will go to Denver for the DNC. In 2004, Kerry didn't win every delegate on Election Day, but most of the delegates that eventually went to the DNC were his. Once there's a presumptive nominee, the delegate numbers are subject to change. It's non-binding.

If that makes your head spin, the short version is that this was a beauty contest, and you can't project delegate numbers at this time.

On the question of charges of voter suppression and intimidation, which the Obama campaign is officially alleging, Derby said this (paraphrase):

"We had strict standards in place for what went on in the caucus room. Outside of the room is not necessarily our purview. We did get a few calls over the course of the day, and we did eject some people from the caucus room for engaging in tactics that were not within the rules."

I asked her if she was going to initiate an investigation, and she demurred. She basically said that if Nevadans feel they have had their voting rights infringed upon, they should take it up with the "proper avenues," which specifically she said was the courts. She also basically said that there was a lot of passion on both sides, and these kind of charges get thrown around in those circumstances.

Trying to be hands-off here, just the facts, ma'am. I can tell you one thing - this will not go away, and it could end up being a very big part of the conversation heading into South Carolina.

The Trap

Having now covered the campaigns for a full day, I completely see why our political media is as dysfunctional as it is. You're shuffled from one event to another. You watch speeches and town hall meetings. You're in big rooms with these candidates and watching them react to thousands of people. And you have to write a column and your editor is probably demanding that you determine who has the momentum. Furthermore, you start to think that you're equipped to make that determination. If I were to do so, I would say that Hillary Clinton will win today's caucuses, because she had the bigger and more enthusiastic supporters last night, and she gave the better speech. But in reality, I don't have a fucking clue, and really I don't think anyone does.

Watching a speech is not data that can be used in a "horse-race" story. You're not seeing volunteer action, you're not seeing how many are at the phone banks, you're not seeing the number of precinct captains, and in a race like this, that's what's going to win, because there's very little to suggest that there's even an election tomorrow outside of the occasional channel 3 News billboard advertising "live caucus coverage," and really the Wayne Brady billboard is bigger. There have been very few polls, and while the most recent ones have shown a Clinton lead, the turnout is fairly impossible to predict. Iowa and New Hampshire's turnout was enormous on the side of the Democrats because the campaigns put resources and face time in there for months. This has been more of a ten-day sprint, and so I'm hearing anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 caucus-goers, which makes the prediction process completely untenable. And the traditional media is gun shy of that type of environment, so they're not going there (although they're polling the heck out of South Carolina, having learned such a great lesson from New Hampshire).

Furthermore, I'm only seeing a piece of the state, albeit the piece with the largest population by far; Las Vegas may be the only city where you can credibly judge things that way. But my colleagues at Calitics are in the northern part of Nevada volunteering , and they were transferred by the campaign from Reno to Carson City because there were too MANY volunteers. That's at least a data point. So is Obama's campaign buying banner ads on Yahoo! and other search engines that say "caucus this morning at 11am," meaning they know that I'm connecting from Nevada. That's an under-the-radar data point.

As a pundit simply following the campaign from event to event, your data is verbal tics and reactions and other things that are actually indicative of nothing. It could be that David Axelrod flipping out is not the behavior of someone who's winning; it could also be that he's legitimately pissed off about the opponent's campaign making these claims and giving themselves an excuse to downplay the significance of any win by saying that it's Vegas and "the fix is in." Obama's speech was definitely lackluster, for his standards; the crowd appeared to be listening more than buying in to what he was saying, and he fumbled around in the middle. Clinton was really fired up and gave a speech that had emotional highs and lows to a packed high school gym with an overflow crowd in a separate room (which was where we were, as we arrived late; even the OVERFLOW room had a real sense of excitement and an investment in the speech). You actually can't do some sort of psychological analysis and arrive at a conclusion that Clinton knows she's winning and Obama knows he's losing. But that's the only data a lot of these people following the campaign have. And the pundits only typically have a televised feed of that. I'm not absolving them of blame at all, but they're doing the equivalent of gauging the score of a football game by watching the fans in the parking lot.

What you can glean from these events, in fact the only data, is what the two candidates are actually saying, and I wish that reporters would stick to that. So, that long wind-up complete, let me do so:

(oh, and by the way, let me say AGAIN that Edwards was long gone before we got to town, otherwise I'd include him in this story.)

Both Obama and Clinton gave somewhat partisan speeches. Both decried the influence of special interests, both discussed changing our foreign policy of unilateralism, both highlighted "predatory lending" in the mortgage and student loan industries, and both ended up with many of the same ideas (student loan forgiveness in exchange for national service, green energy and green jobs, and an end to the war with fairly vague definitions of what that end would be). Obama, who had international media covering him from Brazil, Korea and Japan just in our little section, talked about the tragedy of homeless veterans (sounds awfully like a certain Mr. Edwards), indexing the minimum wage to inflation (ditto), "healing our racial wounds," a fair criminal justice system, and admonished the crowd "not to demonize immigrants - this is a country built by immigrants." (I appreciated that). He peppered his speech with the usual jokes and stories, like the "fired up, ready to go" story of the lady in the small town in South Carolina, which seems to get more and more like a Paul Bunyan tall tale every time he tells it (I mean, Obama's day up until seeing the fired up lady sounds so progressively horrible, you'd think next time it'll include bad medical news or something). There's a section about that point in the debate where he gave his greatest weakness, and the other candidates gave theirs, and how their weaknesses were things like "I care too much about people" and "I'm frustrated we haven't changed the country", ending with "That's what happens when you're in Washington, you don't speak English. You speak Washington-speak." He talked about how change "comes from the bottom up, not the top-down," and how we have to organize to challenge those special interests that resist progress. But in the end, the message is pretty much this (from notes):

We need a politics based not on ideology, but common sense; not on spin, but straight talk... we're having a friendly battle in the Democratic Party about who we are... are we willing to find unity, to put aside point-scoring and summon the country to a higher purpose? That is why I want to be the President of the United States of America.

OK, I don't think the battle of the Party is to find unity. It's to find the best ways to push the Republicans and successfully set the agenda. We actually do need a politics based on ideology, unless the "common sense" that Obama suggests is actually ideological.

Before you think that this unity stuff is particular to Obama, let me talk to you about Clinton's rally. Her speech was definitely stronger, and more partisan, actually. She said things like "it is not rich people who made America great" and "health care is a right, not a privilege" and "Republicans are the party of ideas - of bad ideas," and she highlighted things like the balloon payment to the failed CEO of Countrywide ($115 million dollars to blow up a company, nice work if you can get it). There was talk about massive deficits under Bush, and stories of health insurers cancelling policies after the patients get sick, and talk of ending the unfunded mandate of No Child Left Behind, and a 21st century GI Bill, and more. But at the very end... well, let me give you over to Matt Stoller, who was there as well:

After a laundry list of items she's going to get done, she posed a rhetorical question of how all of that would be possible. Her answer? By reaching across the aisle, like she has done in the Senate. I hope she's checked with the Republicans on that one.

She says that all the time, actually, and so did Bill Clinton at his earlier event, highlighting her work with Lindsay Graham and JOHN MCCAIN. Um, don't you two know that you might actually have to RUN against John McCain, and the time for puffing him up to increase your own credibility should kind of be over?

Is there some super-secret polling showing that Americans what to "end the partisan bickering" in Washington and come together for the common purpose? I really don't see that. I see a country who has turned on George Bush and wants to go in a new direction. Yet two of our main candidates BOTH keep stressing this theme of unity, and the third candidate, who actually does reject this, doesn't get any love from the media and has been practically shunted aside. What is behind this?

Actually, I don't think it's so difficult. In a time tailor-made for progressive ideas, when the conservative brand is almost entirely trashed, we have two centrist candidates running to lead the party. They say this every day, and no matter what kind of onion-peeling and "no, what they actually mean is THIS" you try to do, that's pretty much the answer.

UPDATE: Let me revise and extend. The strategy Clinton and Obama appear to be employing is a perfectly normal general election strategy. “Bringing the country together” isn’t all that radical a political theme, and after 8 years of “my way or the highway” conservatism, I can see how it would have some limited appeal. But we’re in the middle of a Democratic primary. I think it was Stoller in a post about a month ago who wondered if we could be pandered to just a little bit before we were ditched for independents and swing voters. It could be that the first few primaries are open to independents. But yesterday I felt like I was watching the candidates for the nomination of the Independent Party of America, and it rankled me.

And I do believe that this stress tells you how a President Clinton or a President Obama will govern, as well as telling you how much influence progressives will actually have in their subsequent Administrations. Ultimately, as I have said, we the people are going to have to be the “agent of change” through political pressure, movement-building, and successfully using the primary process to take back the party piece by piece (the most important elections on Feb. 5 are for Mark Pera and John Laesch in Illinois, and the most important one a week later is for Donna Edwards in Maryland). Obama at least talks about how he can’t do it alone, and how change happens from the bottom up. And I’m not averse to talking about “working together” with Republicans. But Republicans ARE, and the conservative movement is not likely to give up so easily and watch as an agenda to which they are diametrically opposed gets installed.

Partisanship is a good thing. It gives people choices. There are legitimate differences about how to meet our challenges. The point in between those two differences is not necessarily the best; in fact it’s often the worst. When one side of the political aisle has leaders who believe in the value of that middle point, and the other side believes in the extreme, guess where we’re going to end up. “Screwed” would be the word I would use.

The Big Dog In North Las Vegas

So we're in the Obama press area awaiting his arrival (in about an hour, I'm told). We just got back from a Bill Clinton event in North Las Vegas at a local YMCA. There were about 150-200 people there. Bill came out and said he mostly wanted to take questions, and then proceeded to talk for about 45 minutes (hah!). It was a solid speech, completely extemporaneous, talking about the challenges we must face in the next four years and how his wife is best able to face them. Specifically he honed in on subprime mortgages and the trouble with Big Shitpile ("people who have never missed a mortgage payment will lose their homes" because the banks will need to refinance to recoup their losses from bad investments), America's stature in the world, and building a clean energy future ("Nevada is perfect for this - the wind blows and the sun shines, and we can capture all of that"). He highlighted Hillary Clinton's "consistent record in public life of making positive changes," including school reform in Arkansas, improving foster care and increasing adoptions as first lady, and the creation of SCHIP ("You need to know how the President responds to failure – with Hillary, it was SCHIP.") It was a substantive, reasoned, and worthy case for his candidate. Here's a paraphrase from my notes:

Obama says we need to turn over a whole new leaf, we must begin again. He has explicitly argued that prior service is a disability in picking the next President. Hillary wants to put the country in the solutions business. We must come together by doing. The purposes of politics is to live your hopes and dreams by making changes in people’s lives. Vision and inspiration is important, but so is perspiration and delivery. The ultimate test of our service is who’s delivered for the American people.

Which is an excellent case to make. He also said that he claimed he was in his hotel in Vegas last night, and a bunch of members of the Culinary Worker's union came up to him and said that they weren't going to listen to their union and they would caucus for Hillary. Which is fine. Then, he claimed, a shift supervisor or someone in a position of authority came up and said, "If you do that I'm going to change your schedule so you can't be there to caucus tomorrow." It's a pretty amazing allegation (a union boss is going to threaten and intimidate the voting rights of workers in front of a former President?), and Todd from MyDD and myself have some calls in to Hillary's press people to get some clarification. There's no way to really independently verify it, but it strains credibility to believe that it went down the way President Clinton said. And he said it TWICE, so it wasn't a slip of the tongue.

I do want to highlight this other moment. Among the mostly substantive questions that he eventually took from the audience, Clinton was asked where his favorite places were to travel. He took this softball, began a meandering audio travelogue of all these different places he's been, rambling like an old uncle telling a story with seemingly no end, and then he told this amazing story about this woman in Rwanda who met the man who killed her son and how she forgave him, and he wrapped it up by saying we can all learn some lessons from every place we visit, and he went back over every place he named and gave some vital lesson that came out of it. It was like watching Michael Jordan do some behind-the-back, double-reverse, doesn't-even-know-where-the-basket-is, eyes-closed and it goes in anyway bank shot. It was almost poetic. That's Clinton's real gift, to weave what he called "the story of America" and bring these arcane policy issues into some kind of immediacy for people, making it real to their lives.

On The Ground In Vegas

We just arrived on the Strip about 20 minutes ago. We'll be at campaign events for Obama and Clinton tonight, and out at the caucus sites tomorrow (Mittens Romney will be out at a caucus site at 7:30am, so that could be fun).

I find it instructive to watch the local news reports on caucus eve. Despite what you'd think, there's been about 3 minutes of coverage of the caucuses in the last half-hour. They've actually devoted more to the local women's roller derby team than the caucuses. (ah, local news). One station had an end-of-the-newscast story where the reporter showed a bunch of pictures of the candidates to people on the street and asked them to name them. It wasn't pretty.

When people say they don't know who'll show up to these caucuses, I believe it. It doesn't seem as central to the local scene as, say, the Danny Gans show.

One thing I did notice on the news: Nevada's unemployment rate is up to 5.8%, the highest rate since April of 2002. I've heard that it's been a bad winter in Las Vegas, which may impact the desire of people to caucus if it means missing their shift at the casinos. (By the way, the casinos made $25 billion last year, so they're not exactly hurting; but the employees aren't doing all that well.)

Obama and Clinton both have ads up; Clinton's has this old NFL Films music on it, and it's a little surprising that they went el cheapo on the score).

More later...

Your Intrepid Reporter

So I am headed to Las Vegas in the morning to drink in the sights, sounds and smells of the big city on the eve of the caucus. It's not quite Edward R. Murrow at Dunkirk, but what can you do. My bud Todd Beeton of MyDD fame and I will be out at the closing Obama and Clinton events Friday night (Edwards is in Vegas in the early morning and then moving on to Oklahoma, so sorry folk), and at selected caucuses Saturday morning (probably those at-large casino ones, just to see what the deal is). I'll be checking in when I can.

The Show Goes On At The Strip

The at-large caucuses will go on. Also, this idea that the Culinary Workers are bullying their members into supporting their endorsee is pretty much not true. There appears to be, far from coordination, a good deal of confusion about these caucuses among the Hispanic community (there's no word in Spanish for "caucus"), and it isn't even a slam dunk that many of these employees will be allowed to caucus by their employers even with the events at the hotel (which I believe is a violation of federal labor laws). The caucus system is far from perfect, but the point I was trying to make earlier was that inclusion over exclusion should be the general rule.

The Right To Vote

Patrick Leahy just endorsed Barack Obama, and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee had this to say about this flap over the "at-large" precincts in Nevada being set up for shift workers at the casinos.

Leahy also came out strongly against the ongoing lawsuit in Nevada, where the state teachers union and some Clinton backers are trying to shut down the special caucus locations for Las Vegas Strip workers. "If you're shutting people out from the nominating process, you're going to be discouraging people all the way down," Leahy said. "And that's not the approach we want to take in the United States."

John Kerry also came out very strongly against this tactic at TPM Cafe yesterday.

For too many years, American politics has been divided between two types of people: those who want more people to vote, and those who want fewer people to vote. Just last week, the Bush-packed Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the kind of law we’ve become all too familiar with these last years: an Indiana law putting more roadblocks in the way of people who simply want to vote. (Talk about a not so subtle reminder of why some of us filibustered Sam Alito’s nomination two years ago this month.)

Well, it’s troubling to me that now we see another kind of effort to keep people from voting in Nevada. But this time, it’s not the Republicans trying to limit the vote, it’s a fight within our own Party [...]

Here are the details. Last March, the Nevada Democratic Party came together and put together the rules of the caucus. Because of the high number of casino workers in Las Vegas, and because those workers have to work on weekends, the Democrats of Nevada decided to have special, at-large caucus sites in certain select areas (like right on the Vegas Strip) to give those working people a chance to make their voices heard. The Culinary Workers Union, who represents the workers, celebrated the move.

Suddenly, a mere days before the caucus, we now see a lawsuit to shut down those at-large sites and deny the casino workers their right to vote. Three of the plaintiffs voted for the very plan they’re now trying to block – reasonable people have guessed they’re changing their minds presumably because just a few days ago the Culinary Workers Union endorsed Barack Obama.

Here’s the bottom line. I understand people gut it out to win on Election Day. But certain tactics make victory pyrrhic – empty – hollow – and it’s not worth winning if you lose what really counts in the process. And you know what, if the Culinary Workers had backed someone besides my choice in this race - Barack Obama - I’d still say it’s right for every candidate to make sure these workers get to vote.

Many have claimed that the Clinton campaign is not behind this effort by the teacher's union, but the fact that Bill Clinton lost his shit on a news reporter who tried to bring this up should throw some cold water on that suggestion.

Mr. Clinton turned the tables on Mr. Matthews, whom the former president asserted had taken "an accusatory tone" by claiming a link to Mrs. Clinton's operation. "Your position is that you think the Culinary Workers votes should count: A--it should be easier for them to vote than anybody else in Nevada that has to work on Saturday. That's your first position. Second, when they do vote their votes should count five times as much as everybody else. That's what the teachers have questioned. So if that's your position, you have it. Get on your television station and say it.... 'All I care about is making sure that some voters have it easier than others and that when they do vote, when it's already easier for them, their vote should count five times as much as others.' That is your position," Mr. Clinton said. "If you want to take that position, get on the television and take it. Don't be accusatory with me. I have enough to deal with." [...]

At one point during the exchange with the TV reporter, (Oakland) Mayor Ron Dellums tried to physically pull Mr. Clinton away, but the former president held his ground.

I have to say that, of all the misunderstandings and misinterpretations and smears by surrogates and everything in this primary, the concerted strategy of disenfranchisement, a tactic at odds with the core values of the Democratic Party in the 21st century, is the most troubling. This is not a media creation or something blown out of proportion or the result of an emotional reading of the impact of race or gender. This is about the right to vote. The Nevada State Democratic Party set these caucuses up in March. The DNC approved them. The state board approved them. I've been privy to similar processes in the California Democratic Party, and they are a transparent, open, small-d democratic process. If the teacher's union or their representatives in the NSDP wanted to object to this they had ample opportunity to do so nine months ago.

We have to make the right to vote sacrosanct. The defining feature of our political lives in this century is the Florida recount, and the voter suppression tactics used prior to Election Day. Republicans successfully manipulated the vote and mau-maued the media into defusing the controversy. There is no glory in any Democrat using the same tactic to win a primary or a general election.

Barack Obama has given us all pause with his comments about President Reagan (The charitable interpretation is that he's simply building on St. Ronnie's hagiography by trying to get some reflected glory for himself; I don't think good progressives should be legitimizing that false portrait). But Obama has been a stalwart on voting rights; in fact, it's one of the rare moments in his Senate career where he boldly led.

Jane Hamsher is correct that this attack on Obama from the Politico is unfair. The FEC cannot implement the provisions of legislation Obama pushed through because Obama (among others) placed a hold on Hans Von Spakovsky, a horrific pick to be a commissioner of the FEC. Obama has been very good on voting rights, and it's ridiculous to hold him accountable for Bush's propensity to pick as regulators people who don't believe in the mission of the agency they are supposed to run.

Abrogating the right to vote in any form or fashion is not a road that Democrats should ever go down. The Obama campaign hasn't been particularly energizing for progressives, but on this he has it absolutely right, and the teachers are trying to punish his supporters in Nevada simply for being his supporters. That is wrong. And the Clinton campaign shouldn't want to get a victory that way.

Politics On The Strip

I had been wondering about how those working on the Strip during next week's Nevada caucus would be able to vote. Apparently the Nevada State Democratic Party set up at-large precincts based on employment (in other words, if you work at the Rio, you can vote at the Rio's on-site precinct). Why you would create caucuses in Nevada when the casinos operate 24-7 and aren't likely to let their employees take an hour off (they're apparently being very resistant about it) is an open question. But the uniqueness of the on-site at-large precincts is election lawsuit bait, and the Clinton campaign has proven themselves up to the challenge.

Nevada’s state teachers union and six Las Vegas area residents filed a lawsuit late Friday that could make it harder for many members of the state’s huge hotel workers union to vote in the hotly contested Jan. 19 Democratic caucus in Nevada.

The 13-page lawsuit in federal district court here comes two days after the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Nevada endorsed Senator Barack Obama, a blow to Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Obama addressed the Culinary Union at their hall earlier Friday.

The lawsuit argues that the Nevada Democratic Party’s decision, decided late last year, to create at-large precincts inside nine Las Vegas resorts on caucus day violates the state’s election laws and creates a system in which voters at the at-large precincts can elect more delegates than voters at other precincts. The lawsuit employs a complex mathematical formula to show that voters at the other 1,754 precincts would have less influence with their votes.

I guess the biggest takeaway here is that caucuses are undemocratic. But given that they're the system we have in place in Nevada, this lawsuit is a bunch of crap. The Clinton campaign wasn't concerned about the at-large precincts until they lost the Culinary Workers endorsement. It's wrong of them to base their victory strategy in Nevada on disenfranchisement.

Overall, I think things are setting up for the DNC to have major egg on their face. Nevada was one of the four states given this early date for their election, and there appears to be a lot of confusion over who will vote, so much so that national pollsters are begging off of polling the state. If this lawsuit calls into question the eventual outcome, which it certainly would, since it impacts as much as 10% of the total delegates distributed in the caucuses, that will look miserable.

Can we change this system, please?

Welcome To Caucus Day!

It truly is exciting today, here in this small, mostly white state out in flyover country, where a small subset of Americans will cast their ballot and determine the fate of the GOP hopefuls. The media crush is simply amazing, everywhere you look there's another reporter. And the polling has been so non-stop that you expect another one after the caucusues are over! Yes, the eyes of the nation are truly upon Wyoming today!

Wait, you haven't heard about it?

Don't forget Wyoming. It's been overlooked in the hoopla surrounding Thursday's Iowa caucuses and next week's New Hampshire primary, but Wyoming Republicans will caucus Saturday and choose delegates to the national convention in September.

Candidates have paid little attention to the state, though.

Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul have passed through since September. Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain have not.

"Yes, there have been some appearances by the candidates in this state that otherwise wouldn't have occurred this early in the process," said Jim King, who teaches political science at the University of Wyoming. "But candidates are where the media are — in Iowa and New Hampshire."

This is an example of how truly arbitrary this whole selection process is. The media isn't covering Wyoming because they've decided New Hampshire is more important, and anyway who wants to go to Wyoming after spending all that time in Iowa? So they ignore it, which causes the candidates to ignore it, because the important thing about these early races is the bump and not the win. Not that Wyoming should be decisive, but there's no real reason it should be dramatically less decisive than Iow and New Hampshire; all they have going for them is history. This is exhibit A of why the whole system needs an overhaul.

UPDATE: The good news here for Fred Thompson is that it's another state he gets to skip, just like New Hampshire! And a roar went up in Thompson headquarters. Or a snore. Or something.

UPDATE II: Mitt-mentum!

CHEYENNE, Wyoming: U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney grabbed the early lead in Wyoming's Republican caucuses Saturday as the state had its brief moment in the political spotlight between the traditional attention-getting contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.

This is good news for John McCain.

UPDATE II: With 83% of precincts reporting Romney has 70% of the delegates, Freddie Thompson 20%, and Duncan Hunter 10%. Hugh Hewitt just had a heart palpitation.

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The War On Caucuses

The lack of absentee voting and the inability for a town hall meeting format to adapt to the changing schedules of Americans, making it restrictive and somewhat undemocratic, is yet another reason why I don't support the Iowa caucuses outsized importance. But Iowa's 10-15% turnout is a dream compared to Nevada, where turnout has been BELOW ONE PERCENT in recent years.

I do think other states should get a shot to mix it up every now and again, but really caucuses are not representative of democracy in 21st-century America (unless you do them in shifts so that everyone gets an opportunity, including an online caucus for absentees).