Nevada Today and Looking Back at New Hampshire

John Nichols has The Online Beat blog at The Nation. Today he published A Must-Win State for Obama which includes these points:

Going into Saturday's Nevada caucuses, the balance is tipped in favor of Barack Obama. He has the backing of the biggest union in the state, the Culinary Workers, and that union has successfully defended a system that makes it easier for its members to participate in the caucuses than other Nevadans. (In fairness to the Culinary Workers, they have not done anything wrong -- in fact, they have explored a smart new route for increasing political participation by allowing voting at the workplace. And they have did so with the enthusiastic support of all the major Democratic candidates -- until the point at which they endorsed Obama and allies of Hillary Clinton began to object.)
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Put the pieces together and this points to an Obama win. No one benefits so much as Obama from the structure of the caucuses in Nevada, and he and his supporters have worked that structure from all the angles. They have, at the same time, attracted the sort of mainstream support and favorable media coverage that is traditionally afforded a front-runner.

And what if Obama loses? It'll be a serious setback after a week that, without a win, is likely to be remembered not as a time of triumph but as a moment in which he failed to capitalize on tremendous advantages -- and in which the Democratic senator praised Republican-icon Ronald Reagan for addressing "the excesses of the 60s and 70s." Of course, Obama will remain in the race, but his momentum will stall at precisely the time when he keep advancing against Clinton forces that are ever on the watch for signs of vulnerability and weakness in their opponents.

The Nation also reports on the Clinton campaign spinning the Nevada caucuses

SPINNING A CLINTON LOSS IN NEVADA...

Clinton Campaign strategist Mark Penn has begun spinning Hillary Clinton's potential loss in this weekend's Nevada's caucus, contending that an Obama victory would be essentially illegitimate. In an unusual memo sent to reporters on Friday evening, Penn bemoans Obama's local labor support and emphasizes that two recent polls show Clinton ahead, so the "easy explanation" for an Obama victory would be his union support. This analysis of Obama's (potentially) winning coalition is presented as some sort of indictment, picking up on Bill Clinton's complaints that local party rules allow wide participation in the caucus.

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Most political reporters erred by treating the New Hampshire primary as a story about polls, not people. Mark Penn is betting they'll repeat the same mistake when interpreting the Nevada results.

Which makes an interesting segue to Andrew Cline's column in today's Washington Post The Real Story In New Hampshire:

The Bradley effect did not happen in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. But two questions remain unanswered: Why did Obama surge in the polls in mid-December? And why did the polls not catch Clinton's surge on primary day?

The answer to the first question is easy: Oprah.

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Another factor, much less reported, is that the Clinton campaign sent out a mailer a few days before the primary portraying Obama as a less-than-solid supporter of abortion rights. Consider also that Clinton's support came largely from lower-middle-class families, who are routinely underpolled. Samples are weighted to account for that, but that technique does not always work.

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Whatever the polls said, some well-informed New Hampshire Democrats privately predicted that Clinton would win or come close. They picked up what the polls did not -- that many Democratic women really wanted to vote for Clinton but felt it was their duty as informed voters to check out all the candidates. Those informed Democrats also said Clinton had an operational advantage that could bump her final numbers. Clinton's operation did a masterful job getting her supporters to the polls. That probably accounted for some of her large margin of victory in New Hampshire's two largest cities.

Organization, not race. Obama sounds like he has the organization in Nevada.

One last thought, something I heard earlier this week on MSNBC. Obama cannot afford to lose two in a row or the story becomes Clinton as juggernaut (ok, that is my paraphrase and a chance to use juggernaut twice in a week.) Any chance of the Indiana primary being important this year? I seriously doubt that it will for the Democrats. Republicans? Who can tell. All I worry about with them is that they figure out that doctrinal purity does not win elections (or is any good for running a country - as they have shown this past seven years).