(Cross-posted at The Field.)
The scene in the photograph linked above, I witnessed first-hand yesterday.
There are so many accusations and counter-accusations about alleged dirty tactics by the Clinton and Obama camps yesterday in Nevada. Couple that with a news media that makes presumptions in lieu of reporting, and even more underhanded spin after-the-fact, and the confusion is palpable. Let's cut through the fog.
Many press reports have stated that the Clinton campaign was able to fight Obama to a virtual draw in the nine at-large caucus sites along the Las Vegas strip because many members of the Culinary Workers Local 226 bucked their union's endorsement.
That was not the case in the caucus I observed. Clinton won that caucus - garnering 42 delegates (it's biggest delegate catch among the nine at-large caucuses) to 19 for Obama - because more than 200 strip workers, predominantly not members of the Culinary Workers, outnumbered the 98 (mostly) members of Local 226 that showed up.
Originally, another colleague and I had showed up at the Bellagio casino to observe that caucus, intrigued because Bill Clinton had personally made such a large effort to pull Culinary Workers there into the Clinton camp. The person responsible for press for the Nevada State Democratic Party informed us that there would not be sufficient room for all the reporters that wanted to cover that caucus, and sent us across Las Vegas Boulevard South to another at-large caucus at the Paris Casino instead.
We got there to find a chaotic scene - as I mentioned yesterday, much like a Bizarro World wedding - in which two sets of chairs were divided by an aisle: one one side were the Clinton supporters, with the red-and-black "I support my union, I support Hillary" placards, and on the other side Culinary Workers, many in red union t-shirts, shouting back and forth at each other.
As we approached the Concorde Ballroom, a culinary union organizer was saying to another, "we're getting our asses kicked here." (This was already not much of a surprise because over at the Bellagio we had seen many uniformed nurses on line with Clinton buttons and t-shirts, clearly not culinary workers, but within the caucus rules that stated any worker on shift that day - union or not - within two-and-a-half miles of the strip (really, a huge swathe of Vegas) could participate in the nine at-large caucuses.
Local 226 was indeed getting its butt kicked, but not by its own membership. The Clinton campaign had brilliantly organized other sectors of workers to flood the at-large caucuses, while the Obama campaign made a boneheaded error in simply leaving the organizing for the at-large caucuses up to one union. How do we know that? Two bilingual reporters interviewed the people there. With a very small number of exceptions, there were not culinary workers in the Clinton camp, and there were not other kinds of workers in the Obama camp.
An outspoken woman led the Clinton camp, shouting instructions to the troops. On the other side of the aisle a tall African-American man in a chef's hat told her, "You're not one of us!"
"I'm a union sister just as much as you are," she replied, declining to disclose what union she represented.
Now, I'm a connoisseur of ugliness in all its forms, I find it mostly entertaining, but the part of yesterday's caucus that was so ugly as to be distressing was to see the Hispanic and black communities so polarized: The Clinton caucusers were predominantly Hispanic-American and the Obama caucusers were predominantly African-American - most on both sides were women - and they shouted and taunted each other with boos, cat-calls, hisses, thumbs down, and at one point one man on the Obama side began chanting, "I did not have sex with that woman!" (The apparent shop steward in the chef's hat bolted over to him to tell him to shut up: "this is a serious caucus," he said, succeeding in getting that soldier back in line.)
It was clear at that moment that while all the race-baiting of the past two weeks didn't have the desired effect on most white Democrats, it had driven a stake between the Latinos and the blacks. And this, if it continues that way into California and other primaries, is going to mean bad news for the political futures of both groups. Democrats - this is a matter that is much bigger than Clinton v. Obama - have only nine days before the California primary to try and put out that fire before it burns down the house.
The other observation I have is that the Clinton campaign's organizational efforts for the at-large caucuses - the recruitment of strip workers that were not culinary workers - clearly pre-dated the Thursday Federal Court decision discarding the lawsuit against the at-large caucuses. It suggests very strongly that Clinton knew the lawsuit would never succeed based on canons of law, but, rather, it was a media stunt, a show to lull the Obama camp into thinking it had the at-large caucuses sewn up.
The results - 268 at-large delegates for Clinton to 224 for Obama, a total of 492 or almost five percent of all delegates elected statewide yesterday - show that the Clinton campaign turned out 1,340 voters (54 percent) to the at-large caucuses while the Culinary Workers union turned out just 1,120 (46 percent). A difference of 220 was Clinton's margin, and it was done mainly through the recruitment of other kinds of strip workers. There's nothing underhanded about that: pure organizational muscle, well deployed, within the caucus rules (that's not to say that there weren't sleazy tactics in the other 7,000 Clark County caucuses, as has been accused back and forth: it simply means that the at-large caucuses were fairly won by Clinton). And the thing is, if the Clinton camp had written off the at-large caucuses, the Culinary Workers would still have only generated 224 delegates with its turnout, about two percent of the statewide total, not enough to make up the five point deficit across the state.
Rural voters made up for Obama's more effective base: putting him over the top in the 2nd Congressional District so high that he beat Clinton for in the statewide formula for Democratic National Convention delegates, 13 to 12. (In upcoming primaries in Idaho, Utah, Arizona and Oklahoma, and upcoming caucuses in Minnesota, Colorado, North Dakota, Alaska, and Kansas - nine of the 24 contests on Tsunami Tuesday, February 5 - the formula is there for Obama to similarly utilize its rural strength to win the national delegate wars in many, of not most, if not all, of those states if it repeats its organizational emphasis on rural votes.)
That the 60,000 member Culinary Workers union turned out only 1,200, or two percent, of its membership in the at-large caucuses is not only cause for concern among its own ranks, but also adds to a general trend in the union movement nationwide. Remember that, in Iowa, the bulk of unions backed Edwards and Clinton, and yet the exit polls showed a virtual tie (Obama 29, Clinton 28, Edwards 28) among union voters. It may be that union endorsements, across the board, don't count as much as the hype suggests. That's not a fact that this observer cheers. It is, rather, to be mourned.
Add to that the complete lack of solidarity from other unions when the Clinton supporters sued to disenfranchise the culinary workers, the fact that one of the plaintiffs was itself a teachers union, and the Latino-black wounds that have been reopened by the playing of the race card, and the damage done to the Democratic party and the union movement in the name of a grab for political power is perhaps irreparable.
Frankly, unless events conspire during this 2008 Democratic primary process to reverse those truly ugly developments, any Democrat that thinks that November is already won is a fool that is not to be taken seriously from here on out. Without some miracle between now and then that forges unity out of such division, one or another large group of usually Democratic voters is going to stay home in larger numbers than in the past, and the overconfident Democrats out there ought to begin practicing how to pronounce President McCain... or President Romney.