Harry Reid Allies To Team Clinton: Don't Slam Nevada's Caucus
Her campaign's attempt to downgrade expectations backfires in the pivotal caucus state.
By Annie Karni
02/15/16 05:20 AM EST
With five days to go until the Nevada caucuses — once viewed as Hillary Clinton’s Western firewall — Sen. Harry Reid and his allies are incensed at the wounded Democratic front-runner.
The reason: the Clinton campaign’s attempt to downgrade expectations there by whitewashing the diverse state.
The campaign’s recent assertion that Nevada is “still a state that is 80 percent white voters” — in other words, a state that looks a lot like Bernie Sanders’ base — is simply wrong, Reid allies claim. But more galling than that, they say, it undermines the entire rationale for the caucuses’ existence:
The state was pushed to the front of the election calendar eight years ago solely because Reid lobbied for better demographic representation than the overwhelmingly white early-voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire.
“Harry Reid pushed hard to move Nevada near the front of the primary calendar precisely because of its diversity,” a source close to the Senate minority leader said last week after the Clinton team pushed the “white Nevada” narrative in a series of conferences calls to donors and lawmakers on the Hill, as well as in television interviews (Clinton operatives have since appeared to back off that argument).
“Nevada is the early state that is truly representative of America, and we’re proud of that fact,” the source added. “It sounds like the Clinton team is worried about another embarrassing result.”
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/clinton-hillary-nevada-blowback-219295#ixzz40Hc2WpiQ
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