[disclaimer: I'm a Hillary supporter].
Hillary had a good win today in Nevada. Here are a few thoughts on her victory and going forward:
- Hillary had a great turnout operation and had a good message on the economy for Nevada voters.
- Hillary has real strength among traditional Democrats, women, and Latinos. Obama could benefit from talking about issues that matter to Democrats instead of trying to paint Hillary using negative GOP frames and talking up his own personal qualities. Despite Obama's support among left-leaning Democrats, he is actually to the right of Hillary on a lot of issues (except foreign policy, where he is dancing to his own beat). You can't run a Republican campaign inside a Democratic primary and expect to win.
- Hillary's debate performance was a motivator for late deciders again. She has shown in forum after forum that she is the better debater, and many voters (including me) have concluded that the reason she is consistently good is because she is the better candidate and would make the better President.
- Obama (and Kossacks) might want to revisit the comments of those of us who criticized him for statements suggesting Reagan wasn't all bad. I don't think it sat well with late deciders.
- Bill Clinton shows us he's crazy like a fox. When he heard that the culinary union had indicated that everyone in their union had to vote Obama or else, he raised holy hell. He got up in people's grills, talked to voters directly, talked to the Media, showed up at caucus sites on the Strip and basically intimidated the union into backing down and letting the voters decide. As CNN showed from their camera at Caesar's Palace, the race was pretty much even on the strip. That helped Hillary maintain her margin elsewhere.
- Edwards needs to seriously think about quitting the race. A showing of less than 5% is far below expectations. Voters do not seem to think that he is viable and are choosing between the top two candidates. Hillary is picking up more Edwards voters, and that is why she ended up over 50% in this state and will likely hit that number in a lot of states.
- Hillary has a real opportunity to reconnect with African American voters in SC in Monday's debate after this win. SC voters seem turned off by the negative campaigning, but don't necessarily dislike her. Her message on the economy combined with Obama's statements on Reagan will convince many African American voters who are 35 and above that perhaps Obama isn't quite ready for the job and that she is.
- With this win, Hillary has set herself up nicely to campaign in the Feb 5 states and score wins. Obama has to have SC to have momentum going into Feb. 5, so Hillary should have a little more time to visit CA, MO, AR which have far more delegates at stake. I expect Obama to win SC and I think the result will be around a 5 point margin. It could be a lot closer if Edwards goes into free fall as he did in Nevada.
- The race won't be settled on Feb. 5, but I think the delegate count will show a clear #1 and #2, and there will be a great desire on the part of the party to have both of them run on the general election ticket.