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Terence Samuel thinks the Nevada primary has the potential to cease the escalation of hostilities between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton:
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. ...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.Read the rest (and comment) here. --The Editors
