bbc.co.uk Navigation

Justin Webb's America

Justin Webb picture

Democratic enthusiasm

  • Justin Webb
  • 19 Jan 08, 10:52 PM GMT

Amid the Clinton-Obama fallout, surely the most important long-term figure is the turn-out: something around 100,000 did I hear?

How many did they get to vote here in 2004? Nine thousand.

I know the Nevada caucus is more important now than it was then - but the fact is that Democrats are coming to the polls this year, they are up for it. Republicans are not.

It could change of course. Republicans could get enthused somewhere down the road, but at the moment they are not.

Perhaps conservatives feel disoriented when every candidate feels like an insurgent - none has the clear backing of the national party leadership and there is no obvious frontrunner. Whatever the reason, they are lagging behind in the enthusiasm race.

Never mind the winner in Nevada, feel the width of the voting pile...

Clinton: The magic returns?

  • Justin Webb
  • 19 Jan 08, 09:50 PM GMT

So, Mrs Clinton has done it again. She looked utterly shell-shocked after the loss in Iowa - is she beginning to get that serene look back now, the one she had last summer when she swept imperiously through the early candidate debates?

Never mind what we hear from the Obama camp about his achievement in getting this close; these events are magical as much as rational. And the magic - that was his - is now (maybe?) hers to squander...

Romney's wisdom?

  • Justin Webb
  • 19 Jan 08, 07:11 PM GMT

Mitt Romney's projected victory in Nevada is regarded as a non-significant result by his fellow top tier Republicans but, in this weirdest of campaign seasons, has he perhaps done the wise thing? He has, after all, won something on a day when only one other Republican will be able to claim that (in South Carolina) and he guarantees himself a mention, if only a short one, when the days results are discussed.

And I draw your attention to the below, which I have just received from the UK - Romney does not approve of Europeans and their fancy socialist ways but someone in the UK plainly loves him, or sees him as a meal ticket ...

"Mitt Romney has been cut to win the Republican Party candidature and the race for the White House after a number of significant wagers, British bookmakers Ladbrokes said on Saturday.

"The former Massachusetts governor, who has chosen to campaign in Nevada whilst his rivals slug it out in South Carolina, hit the comeback trail in Michigan.

"And the win has impressed a number of gamblers who have backed him in from 14/1 to 12/1 to take up residence on Pennsylvania Avenue and from 4/1 to 3/1 to get the GOP's nomination."

Latino appeal

  • Justin Webb
  • 19 Jan 08, 03:42 PM GMT

Easy to forget that the Nevada events today involve Republicans as well: it seems that only Mitt Romney has been serious about winning there and amassing the delegates, again a true rational business leader approach to campaigning from the man who rescued the Olympics in nearby Utah.

BUT here is the issue for the Republicans, going far beyond the question of who wins their caucus today: is the party serious or not about appealing to Latino voters, who make up about a quarter of Nevada's population and are a huge force as well in the key 2008 battleground states of New Mexico and Colorado?

Pollsters say the evidence is that legal Latino voters are put off by all the talk of illegal immigration that comes from most of the candidates as they troop around South Carolina. Is the party commiting suicide - long-term electoral suicide - by failing to appeal to Latino voters who should be in tune with it on other issues (abortion etc) but who feel excluded by the immigration issue? My friend the Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez, who wrote the book Los Republicanos: Why Hispanics and Republicans Need Each Other, is clearly on one side of this argument.

On the other side though is the simple fact (unpalatable as it may be to the elites, and to foreigners with a sentimental view of American immigration) that millions of Americans really are deeply worried about undocumented workers and about the future of the English language as a tie binding the nation together. There is nothing racist about appealing to them. The Democrats are not going to give them a voice, so why shouldn’t the Republicans?

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk