Clinton wins Nevada caucuses steeped in accusations, uncertainty

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) withstood a strong challenge from Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to win the Nevada caucuses Saturday in a contest that saw the campaigns trading fierce shots even as the caucuses were underway.
 
The Clinton campaign was unsure how Saturday would unfold as senior strategist Mark Penn sent out an memo Friday night warning that polls showing Clinton in the lead could be misleading because of the confusing way delegates were awarded from the at-large caucus sites on the Las Vegas strip.
 
The campaign further underscored that uncertainty on a conference call Saturday afternoon, where Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson and Nevada field organizer Karen Hicks told reporters that the campaign had received reports of attempted vote suppression.
 
{mosads}"As we've all seen in New Hampshire, sometimes the polls are wrong," Wolfson said, adding that Obama's campaign "essentially predicted victory" by virtue of winning the culinary workers union endorsement.
 
Wolfson would not dispute reports that former President Bill Clinton claimed to witness that suppression firsthand. Wolfson did, however, decline to elaborate.
 
The Obama campaign responded with a memo to reporters while the caucuses were underway, saying that it was the Clinton campaign that had attempted to suppress the votes of culinary workers who, despite a legal challenge, were allowed to caucus on site at the Las Vegas major casinos.
 
The memo from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe was entitled "The Clintons and the Discredited Caucus."
 
Plouffe said Obama had successfully erased a 25-point deficit, but a win for Obama in Nevada "would be a significant upset."
 
That said, Plouffe said the campaign "remains concerned that the tactics of the Clinton campaign and their allies in recent days have confused voters and could lower participation."
 
"It is a sad day when Democrats start trying to suppress the vote of other Democrats," Plouffe wrote. "Beginning with the lawsuit filed by their allies to suppress turnout among union members, the Clinton campaign has been engaged in a systematic effort to discredit the process — a process which was pushed, developed and approved by their supporters at the Democratic National Committee and in Nevada."
 
{mospagebreak}With most of the caucus sites reporting, Clinton appeared to have a solid lead of more than 5 percentage points. That win follows on her surprise victory in New Hampshire after Obama won handily in the Iowa caucuses.
 
The race has taken a decidedly nasty tone as Obama and Clinton have stepped up their attacks in recent days as the temporary truce to recognize the accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr. appears to be over.  The next battle comes in South Carolina on Jan. 26.
 
The top Democrats are expected to participate in a debate in South Carolina Monday, which is a national holiday to honor King. Clinton and Obama have been courting the black vote for months and the real test of who will win that battle will come on Saturday.

{mosads}Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) continued to struggle in the early states Saturday, as he came in a distant third in the Silver State. His inability to connect with the labor union heavy state is viewed as a blow to his ability to come back from three early losses — even though he hails from South Carolina.
 
A win in South Carolina is important for Obama and Clinton but more crucial for Obama since Clinton has seized momentum in the race. The first-in-the-South primary represents the last big contest before the campaign moves into the expensive media-markets and larger states of Super Tuesday.
 
While the Republicans have been campaigning hard in Florida, which has its primary Jan. 29, the Democrats have all pledged not to campaign in the state and the Democratic National Committee stripped the state of its delegates after it moved its primary ahead of the committee-allowed Feb. 5 window.