Trailhead: A campaign blog.

Union Be Damned

Make no mistake, Hillary Clinton's projected win in the Nevada caucuses is a big deal. Not because she won—polls had her in the lead going into the caucus--but because the culinary union failed.

After Barack Obama's win in Iowa and his defeat in New Hampshire, Nevada's culinary workers' union endorsed Barack Obama—a move that pundits, aides, and staffers all said greatly boosted Obama's chances and maybe even guaranteed a win. But something seems to have gone wrong.

Latinos make up a large but undetermined portion of the culinary union, yet they favored Clinton over Obama 2.5 to 1, a loss that is foreboding for Obama as he moves forward and may have doomed him in Nevada. Moreover, Obama lost to Clinton in Clark County, where a large majority of Nevadans live and where the union has especially large sway because of its epicenter in Las Vegas. Even the controversial at-large caucus sites couldn't help Obama beat Clinton. Clinton's camp said that the at-large sites may give Obama a 5-point jump in the results, but it doesn't seem that ended up happening. If it did, then Obama has even bigger problems than he thought.

Clinton may have Harry Reid's son to thank for overcoming the union's power. Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid endorsed Clinton early on and seems to have delivered enough establishment support to sap the union's strength. With 82 percent of precincts reporting, Clark County chose Clinton over Obama 54 percent to 44 percent.

One last tidbit: Clinton had more than twice the number of Nevada unions supporting her as either Obama or John Edwards. They weren't as large as Obama's, but union members may have fallen in line with the leadership's wishes more resolutely. Exit polls show that she was tied with Obama among union members.

Obama struggled to grab union support in the early primary states, so the culinary union was thought to be a major breakthrough. Instead, it may have just allowed him to save face.

Photograph of Hillary Clinton on Slate's home page by Elise Amendola/AP Photo.

Obama's Entrance Poll Woes

If the entrance polls are suggestive of real votes in Nevada, Barack Obama has a big problem on his hands. Ms. Clinton, meanwhile, has reason to celebrate and wonder why all the hoopla over unions and caucus sites was necesasry. According to CNN:

• Seventy-two percent of voters surveyed were older than 45, and they favored Clinton over Obama.
• More female voters than male. Both genders favored Clinton over Obama, but women especially so (52 percent to 30 percent).
• Sixty-five percent of voters say this week's debate in Nevada played into their decision, and Clinton leads among those voters by considerable margins.
• Eighty-three percent of voters were Democrats, 52 percent of whom chose Clinton and 33 percent of whom chose Obama.
• The silver lining for Obama is the 12 percent of voters who said they were supporting John Edwards. Reason follows that they would go to Obama as a second-choice candidate, not Hillary, because of the two candidates' change messages.

Bill's Caucus Beef

It’s no secret that union endorsements are more powerful in states with caucuses than in those with primaries. Without the privacy of the voting booth, you’re much less likely to flout your union’s preference. But that’s exactly what Bill Clinton is asking Nevadans to do.

The former president told an audience in Sparks, Nev., yesterday that he had spoken with members of the Culinary Workers union who said they would ignore the union's endorsement and caucus for Hillary. “They think they're better than you are at identifying and physically getting people to their caucus sites,” he said. “And I bet they're wrong.”

The Clintons have made their disdain for caucuses plenty clear. “You have a limited period of time on one day to have your voices heard,” Hillary said last week after Obama won Iowa and the Culinary endorsement. “That is troubling to me. You know in a situation of a caucus, people who work during that time—they're disenfranchised.”

But then, when it became clear that otherwise-disenfranchised culinary workers would likely dominate the at-large precincts set up in Vegas hotels, the Clintons opposed that, too. The Nevada State Education Association, whose leadership largely supports Clinton, filed a suit protesting (legitimately, it seems) that the at-large precincts give caucus-goers disproportionate influence. Bill agreed with the complaint: “I think the rules oughta be the same for everybody.” Of course, there was no objection to the process before Obama won the union's backing.

This argument—that caucuses are inherently unfair and undemocratic—has merit. It doesn't allow everyone to vote. It weights some votes more than others. There's no secret ballot. But somehow these points only come up in the statements of the losing (or handicapped to lose) party. Watch them resurface if Hillary doesn’t win Nevada. If she does … well, then maybe the system isn’t so bad after all.

UPDATE 4:22 p.m.: The Culinary Workers union weighs in on Bill's statements. “I think if we had endorsed Hillary Clinton, they probably wouldn’t be saying that,” spokesman Chris Bohner tells me. “I think they would be urging members to follow the union leadership.”