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发帖数: 897 | 1 LaS VEGAS—The line Friday evening stretched outside Cardenas Market in Las
Vegas, teeming with Hispanic voters eager to cast ballots.
Many had to wait for hours on the last day of a fortnight of early voting in
Nevada, plied by food and exhortations from activists who didn’t have to
do much. Election officials had to keep the polling place open an extra
three hours to accommodate the line, which was described thusly on Twitter
by Yvanna Cancela, the political director for the majority Hispanic Culinary
union:
Story Continued Below
“Looks like Trump got his wall after all. A wall of beautiful voters.”
By the time Donald Trump’s chief Nevada poll watcher arrived at the
supermarket to complain about the late voting, apparently clued in by the
massive amount of social media traffic about the historic, organic turnout,
it was too late. Just under 2,000 voters had cast ballots at the market,
adding to a record Democratic firewall (73,000 ballot lead in early voting)
in the Las Vegas area and putting a fitting final nail in Trump’s Nevada
coffin.
The next day, Trump arrived in Reno looking like a dead man walking, railing
at the scene in Vegas the night before and blaming “crazy, broken Harry
Reid and his corrupt political machine.” Trump’s key ally in Nevada, state
Republican Chairman Michael McDonald, preceded Trump on the Reno stage and
yelled about allowing “a certain group” to vote until the late hours.
They raged, raged against the dying of their chances. Yet about one thing
Trump was right: Harry Reid built this. After two years of boosting voter
registration among key Democratic demographics, the retiring Senate minority
leader has brought turnout among Hispanics in the state to record levels.
In doing so, he’s almost surely delivered the state for Hillary Clinton—
and possibly with it the presidential race (Trump has only the narrowest
path to 270 electoral votes without Nevada). The reality of this election is
that if Clinton wins, especially if she ends up needing Nevada, it’s not a
stretch to declare that Reid was the single most important person in her
victory.
Of course, Harry Reid couldn’t have done this without Trump, who laid the
foundation when he announced his candidacy talking about Mexican rapists and
murderers, erected a wall around his primary foes with his hard-edged
immigration positions and accused an American judge of bias because of his
Latino heritage.
A microcosm of the country, with its melting pot population and growing
Latino voting bloc, Nevada signaled with its early voting turnout and record
Hispanic participation that Trump has proven a better turnout driver of
that demographic than anyone could have imagined—and for all the wrong
reasons. It is ironic now to recall the GOP strategists behind that
Republican National Committee autopsy in 2012, whose main exhortation was to
reach out to minority voters lest another election be lost. As if in answer
to that, GOP primary voters nominated the antithesis of its prescription.
Reid’s ground operation exploited the fear and loathing of Trump to the max
, and the early results bear it out: Whereas the Latino vote was 15 percent
of the Nevada electorate in 2008 and 18 percent in 2012, data I have seen
shows now it is up 30 percent from 2012 in early voting, meaning it could go
above 20 percent of all voters by Tuesday evening.
“We’ve been focused on registering and building our Latino turnout from
Day 1,” said one Democratic organizer. “That is paying dividends with
Latino turnout up in the early vote and potentially up overall. In five out
of the six highest Hispanic precincts, turnout in the early vote exceeded ’
12.”
You can be sure one of those precincts included the Cardenas market.
Now, in virtually ensuring that Clinton has enough votes banked in early
voting to take Nevada, Reid can ride off into the sunset knowing he has
created perhaps the most fearsome political machine in history, one that
will have delivered three successive victories to Democratic presidential
nominees, saved himself in 2010 and probably filled his seat this cycle with
his chosen successor. He might also have cemented Nevada’s bellwether
status–only once in the last century (1976) has the state failed to vote
for the eventual winner.
Yes, they still have to count the votes Tuesday. And I suppose a miracle
could occur, all the data and history could be wrong and Trump could win
Nevada.
But saying that almost certainly will not occur is not idle speculation, nor
does it have anything to do with either campaign, even though Trump’s
essentially is nonexistent here: It’s about math.
The Democrats have such a huge ballot lead in Clark County that Trump would
have to win the rest of the state by unprecedented margins to win. Clark is
about 70 percent of the vote, and if past is prologue, two-thirds of
Nevadans voted before Election Day. There simply are not enough votes left
for Trump to win unless something very, very strange is going on.
***
Here’s how Team Reid, fully integrated with a Clinton campaign that early
on recognized the power of Hispanic voters here and elsewhere, did it:
After a disastrous 2014, in which a red wave swept the state and embarrassed
the machine that Reid erected, his right-hand in Nevada and nonpareil
operative, Rebecca Lambe, began preparing for 2016. The Reid folks knew two
things: Clinton would not generate the enthusiasm Obama had, and they needed
to beef up registration in the state.
They did not miss anything, even at the hidden, granular level. In the
legislature of 2015—it only meets every two years—Lambe directed traffic
to ensure early voting hours were not curtailed. (That paid off Friday night
, although the general rule always has been if you are in line, you get to
vote.)
A few weeks ago, they threatened to sue the Republican secretary of state if
she didn’t extend registration deadlines to comply with federal law. She
did.
And when the final registration figures came in, the Democrats had padded
their lead to nearly 90,000 statewide, matching the 2012 numbers. All they
had to do was overcome the enthusiasm gap by building up the raw vote totals
, which is what they did.
But Team Reid did something else, too, which everyone has missed. Even
though nonpartisan registration has grown faster than either major party,
the Reid folks saw that happening and adjusted.
“Much of the nonpartisan registration that occurred this year was done by
our side,” one Reidite told me. “Looking at the data, many of the
nonpartisans who are voting are younger (20 percent), include people of
color (11 percent Latino) and are new registrants (24 percent) as of
yesterday.”
So the composition of the early vote, half of which was amassed before last
week’s disastrous FBI letter, may be worse than it seems for Trump. And it
seems devastating on its face.
Consider recent history. In both 2008 and 2012, the early vote numbers were
predictive. The Democrats built up huge leads in Clark County and those
banked votes translated into 13 and 7 point wins for Barack Obama,
respectively.
The early vote totals, even though turnout is slightly down, are very close
to 2012. So Team Trump must come up with fantasy scenarios— for instance,
that he is winning independents, who will make up a fifth of turnout, by a
landslide—to conjure a victory here. But no reliable polling data—and
there is precious little of that—indicates Trump is doing that or that
Clinton is hemorrhaging her base as much as Trump is.
The math simply does not work for Trump unless he gets an extraordinary
Election Day turnout and wins Tuesday by double digits. That is about as
likely as Chris Christie being named transportation secretary to help
rebuild the country’s crumbling bridges.
It isn’t the first time Reid has come to Clinton’s rescue. When she was in
trouble, having lost almost her entire lead over Bernie Sanders here and
coming off a landslide loss in New Hampshire, Reid pretended to be neutral
but put his finger on the scales for her by calling the Culinary to turn out
Latino voters for her.
And now his formidable political organization has erected that wall of
voters Cancela invoked, one that almost guarantees Clinton a Nevada win
Tuesday and forecloses much of Trump’s paths to 270.
Ironically, this comes eight years after Reid posed as Switzerland in the
Democratic primary after he had secretly urged Obama to get in against
Clinton because he didn’t think she could win. I’d say the ledger is now
balanced.
Sure, Trump could win Nevada on Tuesday. But it’s a long, long shot, and
the Republicans would be better off here looking ahead to next cycle because
after this final demonstration of Reid’s utter ruthlessness and organizing
ability, the Democrats in Nevada know the truth:
Apres Harry, le deluge.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/election-2016-nevada-harry-reid-clinton-trump-early-vote-latinos-214426#ixzz4PHoMtuxI
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