When in Iowa in November I met a guy at an Obama event named Jerry David Flusche, who works for a wind power company and seemed like a really cool guy.
Like most Nevada Democrats, he’d never caucused before. After seeing Obama in Fairfield, Iowa, the funkiest town in the entire state, he decided to caucus […]

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Some overnight analysis.
Peter Wallsten in the LA Times crunches the numbers.
The turnout was 80 percent larger than 2004’s big turnout.
Wallsten: “Long viewed as an insular process dominated by longtime political activists, Thursday’s first-in-the-nation voting event of the 2008 campaign turned out to be a forum for unaffiliated voters and first-time participants to say they […]

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CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — It’s 4 a.m. and I’m sitting here at Eastern Iowa Airport waiting on a flight back to Vegas. I can’t wait to get back to a place that doesn’t dip into the single digits, but I’m still awestruck by my Iowa experience and what happened in this tiny, nearly all-white state […]

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Iowa roundup.
To start off, it’s impossible to overstate how significant last night is to American politics. And also Nevada politics (though you’ll have to wait for the Sun print edition for that analysis.) Voters in Iowa roundly rejected their respective party establishments, as noted in this New York Times analysis.
People want something different.
What […]

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This comes via Ben Smith at Sun partner Politico. It’s Washington Post reporting on Biden-Obama deal.
A source close to the Biden campaign described a possible arrangement, now under discussion between the two camps, that could apply to certain precincts where Biden can’t meet the 15 percent viability threshold, but where he is backed by […]

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All attention is on Iowa and New Hampshire right now, so there has been a lull in presidential campaigning in Nevada. But Hillary Clinton’s campaign announced a new TV spot http://www.hillaryclinton.com/video/93.aspx this morning, and when it airs on Monday, it will be the first Democratic campaign ad to mention a Nevada issue.
Sen. Barack Obama […]

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Some news this morning on the all-important Culinary Union front.
UNITE HERE and its 60,000-member Las Vegas affiliate seem to have agreed that they’ll share in a single endorsement of a Democratic presidential candidate — and it may not come until after the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus to improve their odds in betting on a winner.
But […]

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Dan Balz of The Washington Post looks at the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire.
Clinton is putting up a firewall in the Granite State, where the Clintons have long and deep ties. It was in New Hampshire where former President Clinton’s campaign caught fire in 1992. After finishing second even though his campaign was […]

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Sun partner Politico has reporters on the ground in Iowa, where the Democratic race has taken on a new dynamic, as I picked up when I was there earlier this month.
Essentially, Obama is running like a frontrunner, Clinton as a challenger.
DES MOINES — In a reversal of fortune, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is barnstorming […]

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It’s the day after Thanksgiving and things are getting intense out there. For retailers and shoppers, it’s frenzied Black Friday, launching the holiday shopping season. And the campaigns, the Los Angeles Times notes, are rushing toward a few climactic days in January that can decide the presidential race.
With the Iowa caucuses set for Jan. 3, […]

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