On The Ground In Vegas

by dday

We just arrived on the Strip about 20 minutes ago. We’ll be at campaign events for Obama and Clinton tonight, and out at the caucus sites tomorrow (Mittens Romney will be out at a caucus site at 7:30am, so that could be fun).

I find it instructive to watch the local news reports on caucus eve. Despite what you’d think, there’s been about 3 minutes of coverage of the caucuses in the last half-hour. They’ve actually devoted more to the local women’s roller derby team than the caucuses. (ah, local news). One station had an end-of-the-newscast story where the reporter showed a bunch of pictures of the candidates to people on the street and asked them to name them. It wasn’t pretty.

When people say they don’t know who’ll show up to these caucuses, I believe it. It doesn’t seem as central to the local scene as, say, the Danny Gans show.

One thing I did notice on the news: Nevada’s unemployment rate is up to 5.8%, the highest rate since April of 2002. I’ve heard that it’s been a bad winter in Las Vegas, which may impact the desire of people to caucus if it means missing their shift at the casinos. (By the way, the casinos made $25 billion last year, so they’re not exactly hurting; but the employees aren’t doing all that well.)

Obama and Clinton both have ads up; Clinton’s has this old NFL Films music on it, and it’s a little surprising that they went el cheapo on the score.

More later…