This Time in Nevada, Hillary’s All In
Rather long article but worth the read--Hilllary has hard canvassers here--she is not taking anything for granted.
http://www.thenation.com/article/this-time-in-nevada-hillarys-all-in/
This Time in Nevada, Hillary’s All In
In 2008, Clinton took the state and its powerful unions for granted. She’s not making that mistake again.
By D.D. GuttenplanTwitter
November 5, 2015
Hillary Clinton rallies with union organizers outside a Trump hotel on October 12, 2015. (John Locher / AP)
Las Vegas—This is where irony goes to die—or get defibrillated. ............
....................... What happens in America happens in Vegas, too.
That includes politics. Harry Reid’s claim that “nobody lives” in New Hampshire and that Iowa is “a place that does not demonstrate what America is all about” may have been calculated to please his hometown crowd, but he had a point. Nevada has more than twice the population of New Hampshire and is almost twice the size of Iowa—too big to rely on face-to-face politicking. And in a state where nearly half the population is nonwhite, talking the talk on diversity won’t cut it.
Neither will platitudes about the middle class. Journey a few blocks from the bright lights of the Strip, and economic insecurity hangs over the place like a toxic cloud. Nevada lost 186,000 jobs during the crash. Unemployment in Las Vegas is still at 6.8 percent—worse than in any other big city........................
In the 2016 election calendar, the Nevada caucus on February 20 is when reality begins to bite. Along with South Carolina’s primary on February 27, it’s the last hurdle before March 1, when Democrats in 11 states vote at once. Like Iowa’s caucus, the contest here is a test of passion and organization—only this time in a swing state the Democrats need to win in November. Nevada is where the campaign comes back down to earth. And when it does, Hillary Clinton’s people will be waiting.
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“Shake the gate!” It’s early on a Sunday afternoon, and Vanessa Valdivia is on the move. Crisp in a black-and-white-striped dress despite the 95-degree heat, she leads a team of three volunteers (and one reporter) through streets of faded ranch houses and shabby garden apartments canvassing for Clinton supporters. East Las Vegas is a Hispanic neighborhood, and Valdivia switches easily between languages, making sure we alert any dogs before entering each property: .........................
A native of Los Angeles who recently completed a master’s degree at the Annenberg School at USC, Valdivia left a job at Gonring, Spahn & Associates, the Hollywood political-consulting firm whose clients include Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg, to work for Clinton. She and her housemate, Natalie Montelongo (a fellow Clinton organizer whose résumé includes a stint at the DC lobbying firm the Podesta Group), have been living in this neighborhood since August. “My parents are immigrants,” Valdivia says. “My mom is from Mexico, and my dad came from Nicaragua.”
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For Valdivia, part of Clinton’s appeal is clearly aspirational. Her younger sister Ulyssa, still in high school but visiting for the debate, says, “We grew up with our dad telling us, ‘You can be anything you want.’ And Hillary is like a representative of that.” But when I ask the older sister what drew her to Clinton, Vanessa replies: “Social Security and Medicare—I think about my grandmother, waiting for that check every month.”
House-to-house canvassing is the slow, sweaty trench warfare of electoral politics. There are about 20 volunteers and four or five paid staffers fanning out with Clinton leaflets and clipboards, calling at every house with a registered Democrat. ..................................
The “Nevada 2016 Delegate Selection Plan”—the state party’s rule book for the caucuses—runs to 50 pages. With 1,754 precincts choosing just 23 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, it’s a complicated process, but the first stage—neighborhood by neighborhood—is the one that matters. In 2008, Hillary Clinton, wounded by a loss to Obama in Iowa, scraped a win here, taking 50.8 percent of precincts, though Obama actually ended up with more delegates. .............................
