One of the inviolable rules about Nevada politics is that a candidate may never, ever succumb to the puerile temptation to say, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." Maybe the only thing worse would be to support the burial of nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain or to refer to the state's largest industry as "gambling" instead of "gaming."
But as the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama camps recede into an antiquated debate about race and gender, maybe what happens in Nevada in the next week really ought to stay and stop there: If the "shucking and jiving" seminar is still going on by the time we get to South Carolina, all the euphoria and pride generated by the historic look and feel of the Democratic nomination process so far will evaporate. It is not an overstatement to say that the last thing Democrats need is a revival of their identity-politics battles of the recent decades. That would constitute a Great Leap Backward, and they should avoid it
That said, the reality is more complicated. In fact, it is impossible to imagine that the entire campaign could have gone by without some version of the current Obama/Clinton, race/gender argument taking place. The Democratic Party has built its image and message on justice and fairness; its strength has derived from constituencies whose passions flows from their own history of grievance attached to a more general sensitivity to matters of fairness. Clinton and Obama, despite their considerable efforts to situate themselves in opposition to the stereotypes, still represent two important strains of that historical sense of grievance -- blacks and women.
With both campaigns striving to "draw contrasts" and "differentiate" themselves from each other, it seemed only a matter of time before the righteous differences based on old grievances would confront each other. The women of New Hampshire looked at all the history Obama seemed poised to make and decided that American women have some history that needs to be dealt with, too.
It'll be interesting to see how and whether black voters in South Carolina react to the outcome in New Hampshire.
But maybe the Nevada caucuses are exactly the place to have the debate and then step away. The potential for a blacks/women confrontation there is not what it is in South Carolina. African Americans comprise only about 7 percent of the electorate in Nevada. Most of them live in West Las Vegas; maybe the whole thing can be worked out in a single town meeting. Compare that to the expected Democratic turnout in South Carolina, which is projected to be about 50 percent black. Numbers alone make it an entirely different conversation.
Meanwhile, Latinos make up about a quarter of the electorate in Nevada and should command much more attention in that state than blacks. Nevada is the breather we need, and it may be easier for the Clinton and Obama campaign to settle this grievance-appreciation debate in sands of the desert where the population nearly doubled in size in the last 15 years, and where half of the residents live in a different house than they did last year. Better the transient, ephemeral Nevada, rather than the place where the Civil War began and memories are endless.
After so many months of worry about the insanity of the compressed primary calendar, Democrats should regard Nevada as a gift from the political gods. They are, for a few days anyway, forced to talk about labor issues, Western issues, Latino issues. They have to learn how to say Nevada correctly, and talk about the long-term storage of nuclear waste.
Much of what happens depends on how Obama responds to the pressure of not having met expectations in New Hampshire. For many Americans, the real attraction of the Obama campaign has been his strident efforts to eschew identity politics, that bitter, nasty, particularly American brand of conflict that survives by picking at old wounds and new slights.
One question, maybe the most important one, posed by the Obama candidacy is how much the country has changed on these matters; how much have we grown, how thick is the scab, how much healing has there really been? Definitive answers are a long way off, but clearly, identity-grievance politics has not exhausted itself in America.
Women in New Hampshire decided the change that Obama was talking about was not all that new or different after all. The prospect of Hillary getting demolished by some smooth-talking charmer resurrected all kinds memories for them in which women -- hard-working, talented, experienced, dedicated women -- got passed over for some slick, well-connected guy. And that narrative was unaffected by the fact that the guy in this case was black and that the woman in question may be the best connected in history.
For Obama, it really may be something of an accomplishment that so many voters in New Hampshire looked at him as just another guy. That could not be what he had hoped for with all his talk of change, but as they say in Vegas, you pay your money, you take your chances.
