Clinton And Romney Win Nevada Caucuses

Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton and Republican former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won Nevada caucuses voting today — wins that give “Big Mo” to both, particularly to Clinton, a candidate whose style and “voice” is a work in progress.

The reason: the Nevada GOP caucus was not hotly-contested, but the Democratic caucus sure was. And it spells big trouble in the Big Mo Department for Senator Barack Obama who needed the win here (and in South Carolina) to show that he could again derail Clinton from her long-perceived front-runner status.

CNN reports:

Sen. Hillary Clinton will win the Nevada Democratic caucuses, CNN projects.

The New York senator led rival Barack Obama by 8 percentage points with about half of the precincts reporting.

That’s an impressive margin — and can’t be spun as a squeaker.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards was a distant third.

For all intents and purposes, Edwards’ candidacy is over, except for the belief he and his followers have that (a) he can possibly prevail or (b) there would be a deadlock between Clinton and Obama and he’d somehow fill the void.

In the case of Romney, the New York Times reports:

As the rest of the Republican field focused on the primary in South Carolina, Mr. Romney concentrated some of his campaign’s resources on this state, flying here several days ago for a last-minute push. His rivals overlooked Nevada, largely because state rules do not automatically assign delegates to the winning candidate, unlike in South Carolina, where voters were going to the polls Saturday.

With 38 percent of the electoral precincts reporting, Mr. Romney had 56 percent of the vote, while Senator John McCain and Representative Ron Paul each had 12 percent. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee was running fourth with 8 percent.

Good news for Ron Paul followers: Paul got double digits. Bad news for Ron Paul followers: he remains stuck in the basement and has not emerged as the candidate of disaffected voters.

The fact is: a win is a win, particularly in this campaign season when so many candidates seem to be getting their turns at winning a primary. He (or she) who wins several in a row gets the aura of being more than just a flash in the pan. And Gallup has found that primary results DO influence the perceptions and voting in later primaries.

UPDATES:

The AP says Romney won with the help of the Mormon vote.
–Transterrestial Musings is mad because AP says some moderates voted for Ron Paul and decides moderates are badguys:

And frankly, I find people who call themselves “moderate” to generally be people with no firm or coherent political principles whatsoever. All it really means is that they are neither “liberal” or conservative, so the media types find them difficult to pigeonhole. And given the large number of possibilities of positions one can have without being in either of those media pigeonholes, that means that we can’t draw any conclusions whatsoever about them. We need a different word for such people than “moderate.”

(TM: If you read TMV then you know the word is “PERFECT.”)

–Marc Ambinder notes that HC won among Hispanics, women and on the point of experience. Anything can happen this year, but based on this data, it doesn’t look good for Obama in the long term.

–Jazz Shaw:

Following the events today in Nevada, I’m becoming more and more sure that the “Obama threat” was largely a media creation. Even with the service workers’ union support and floating caucus sites inside of casinos, Clinton looks to handily serve up another defeat to Obama outside the margin of error. And from what I can see, Senator Obama will simply get steamrolled on Feb. 5, 2008. Obama has put up a game fight, and I’m sure he’ll continue the battle, but I no longer see a path to the nomination for him. This leaves me with some difficult choices to face.

For some time now, while not endorsing any one particular candidate, I’ve pretty much been in the position of “anyone but Hillary or Romney.” My memories of Hillary Clinton from her time as first lady, combined with my experiences with her here in New York as one of our two Senators, have left me with more than a bad taste in my mouth. I simply outright don’t want her in the White House.

–Dean Esmay:

I see that Clinton and Romney have won in Nevada, which arguably means they both maintain front-runner status. At least, technically, although I still think the odds of a brokered convention for one or both parties is pretty high–and I don’t think that would be a bad thing, by the way.