Alan Maass
HILLARY CLINTON withstood the
surging national support for Bernie Sanders to win the Nevada caucuses for her
first definite victory in the Democratic Party presidential primaries.
The dynamics of the Nevada
contest could be a preview of the rest of the Democratic primary battle.
Sanders, the dark-horse
challenger against the party establishment's clear choice, came from way behind
to make the caucuses far closer than most anyone thought possible a couple
months ago. But Clinton was able to rely on support from the Democratic Party
apparatus--in this case, the big unions centered around tourism and the casinos
in Las Vegas that support Clinton, even though Sanders is clearly more
pro-labor.
The other election story of
last weekend was Donald Trump's victory in the South Carolina Republican
presidential primary vote, with Marco Rubio doing better than expected to
squeeze into second place, ahead of Ted Cruz.
In contrast to the right-wing
maniacs Trump and Cruz, Rubio is presenting himself as the reasonable
alternative--or at least someone who could be packaged that way for the general
election. In reality, he is a staunch conservative, with a
Senate voting record that differs little from the Tea Partying Cruz.
Rubio is gaining an edge as
the candidate with support from the Republican establishment against both Cruz
and Trump. Jeb Bush, who once had the lion's share of party leaders behind him,
dropped out of the race after failing to break out of single digits in South
Carolina. John Kasich could soon follow if he doesn't have another good showing
soon.
That would make the Republican
nomination battle a three-way race--with Ben Carson stumbling along for as long
as his crackpot campaign holds out--but with Trump still well ahead in opinion
polls.
The prospect of a Trump
presidency, or even a Rubio one, will be frightening to millions of
working-class people--and that will exert a growing influence among the
Democratic Party's base voters.
In South Carolina, where the
Democrats will hold their primary next weekend, Rep. Jim Clyburn, the most powerful
Black political leader in the state, not only endorsed Hillary Clinton last
week, but attacked Sanders, claiming
his proposal to make college education tuition-free amounts to a "free
lunch."
His message was consistent
with the one being pushed by the party elite since the start of the year, when
Sanders' campaign started showing signs that he might not be another
progressive also-ran: Democrats need to steer clear of radical rhetoric and
pie-in-the-sky promises, and unite behind Clinton as the strongest candidate in
November.
But the real reason Democratic
apparatchiks are attacking Sanders, as
SocialistWorker.org wrote in an editorial, "is not because he's
turning off voters--but because he's attracting them in larger and larger
numbers."
Enthusiasm for Sanders built
throughout last year as he drew large crowds to his campaign events. In the first
primary contest in Iowa, he rode overwhelming support among younger
caucus-goers to an upset tie with Clinton. In
New Hampshire the following week, he trounced her by a landslide margin.
The Sanders surge is being
reflected in national opinion polls, where he has pulled to within single
digits of Clinton, according
to the weighted average of surveys calculated by Pollster.com. Other polls
matching Clinton and Sanders against possible Republican candidates show that
Sanders would be more likely to win a general election, at least for now.
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BUT HILLARY Clinton's campaign
still has big advantages over Sanders, and some came into play in Nevada.
For one, the powerful Culinary
Workers Union, which represents some 60,000 workers in restaurants, hotels and
casinos in Las Vegas and other Nevada cities, mobilized its members behind
Clinton.
According to
the New York Times, Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader and one of the
most powerful figures in the Democratic Party, encouraged the head of the union
to get its members to take part in the primary, even though the union didn't endorse
either candidate. "Probably 100 organizers [from the Culinary Union] will
be at the caucus sites and in hotels to make sure people know what they're
doing," Reid told the Times.
That helped Clinton to big
wins in caucuses held in six major casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, according to
reports--accounting for a significant part of Clinton's margin of victory in
Clark County, which is home to about three-quarters of the state's registered
Democrats.
The casino bosses lent a
helping hand to the Clinton campaign, too. The
Hill reported that MGM Casino gave workers three hours of paid time off to
participate in the caucus.
The turnout was a sign of the
continuing clout of the party machine in general--and Reid in particular, who
"asserted again today...that he really can change the dynamic of an
election in this state," said local political reporter Jon Ralston on
MSNBC.
Among the other big unions
whose get-out-the-vote operations are closely coordinated with the party
apparatus, the Service Employees International Union dealt Clinton an ace from
the bottom of the deck with a
leaflet that touted her support for a $15 an hour minimum wage--when, in
fact, Clinton has not endorsed a federal $15 minimum. Sanders, of course, has.
Meanwhile, some high-profile
Clinton supporters seem to have tried to smear Sanders in the eyes of Latinos,
a big voting bloc in Nevada.
United Farm Workers leader
Dolores Huerta and actor America Ferrera are being criticized for misleading
Twitter comments that Sanders supporters at one caucus site chanted
"English only" when the caucus moderator said Spanish translation
could not be provided because there was not a neutral translator available.
Sanders backers, including actor Susan Sarandon, responded with links
to video of the event, and said there was no chanting.
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IT'S A sign of how much
enthusiasm Sanders has awakened with his message against corporate greed and
the political status quo that he came as close as he did in Nevada, having
started out so far behind and with so much working against him.
Once again, Sanders dominated
among younger caucus-goers, winning the support of five of every six. And one
entrance poll gave him the edge among Latinos participating in the
caucuses, despite the string of endorsements for Clinton from leading Latino
Democrats--though some
analysts cast doubt on the poll, given Clinton's wins in Latino
neighborhoods around Las Vegas.
Whatever the case, the big
reason that the odds are still huge against Sanders was clear in Nevada:
Hillary Clinton's lock on support within the Democratic Party establishment and
apparatus.
The next contest is in South
Carolina, where Sanders started out even further behind, and the Clinton
campaign is depending on Black support to win. It's as much a travesty that
Hillary Clinton can
rely on African American votes in South Carolina as it is that she could
bank on the unions in Nevada.
Sanders is presenting a
frankly left-wing message on most--though
not all--issues that matter to the Democrats' voting base among working
people, and particularly Black and Latino working people. He has already won
over large numbers fed up with business as usual, including within the
Democratic Party.
That's exactly why the party
leadership--including its liberal wing, from Congressional Black Caucus leaders
like Jim Clyburn to Latino civil rights and labor activists like Dolores
Huerta--will resist the Sanders surge by any means necessary.
Some of the attacks will be
underhanded slander and red-baiting, but others will be couched in the
reasonable language of "lesser evilism"--that
Democrats have to unite behind
the "realistic" candidate in order to beat the greater evil in
November. But all are about maintaining the status quo in a pro-business party
that claims to stand for working people, but doesn't.
And that raises questions
about Bernie Sanders and his decision to run for president within the
Democratic Party. What will he do to challenge a party machine so clearly bent
on making sure Clinton wins? And if he does come up short in that effort, how
can he ask the millions of people energized by his campaign to support the very
candidate they are revolting against?
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