Long battle still ahead for top Democrats
Contest could extend beyond Super Tuesday
LAS VEGAS - For the two leading contenders in the race for the Democratic nomination, the battle is becoming a long, hard slog.
Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had hoped that early wins could catapult them to status as the presumptive nominee, sparing the dominant candidate a prolonged primary fight and allowing her or him to focus on the general election.
But after yesterday's results in Nevada, the two are virtually tied. While the field has been winnowed since Iowa - and the campaign of former North Carolina senator John Edwards deeply wounded after winning just 4 percent of the Silver State vote - the Democratic race still has no clear front-runner despite a front-loaded primary schedule that many believed could settle the nomination early.
As a result, some analysts now believe that the primary contest could extend well beyond the 22 states that vote on Feb 5.
"The shut-off is likely to come at the beginning of March, not the beginning of February," said Tad Devine, a Democratic consultant who is not working for a presidential campaign.
Unless Clinton scores an upset win Saturday in South Carolina, "It's going to continue to be this swinging pendulum," he said.
Obama won the Iowa caucuses by a comfortable margin, only to lose to Clinton the following week in New Hampshire.
Yesterday's Nevada caucuses, in an odd twist reminiscent of the 2000 presidential race, had Clinton winning a greater number of caucus-goers, but capturing one fewer delegate to the Democratic National Convention than Obama.
Caucus rules - not unlike the electoral college system that had 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore winning the popular vote but losing the electoral count to President Bush - mean that Obama could get 13 delegates, and Clinton, 12. The Clinton campaign insists it will end up with the larger portion of the delegate count, and the chairman of the Nevada Democratic party, Jill Derby, said the delegates won't actually be selected until April, when the party has its state convention.
The wrangling over delegate counts - with two candidates' campaigns bickering over a single delegate when there are more than 4,000 at stake - underscores the excruciatingly closeness of the Democratic contest.
"I do think that increasingly this is going to turn into a contest of delegates, and I think that's an important measure," said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager.
Clinton's Nevada win was very significant, showing that her New Hampshire success - startling after polls there showed her losing to Obama by more than 10 points - was not a fluke. Clinton did well among women in Nevada, as she did in New Hampshire, and her success in winning the Hispanic vote here bodes well for later competitions in states with large numbers of Latino Democrats.
But Saturday's primary in South Carolina, the first southern contest for the Democrats, could give Obama the chance to regain steam.
And the states voting on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, could easily divide up fairly closely, analysts note. Clinton, senator of New York, and Obama, senator of Illinois, both have natural advantages in their large home states, which hold primaries that day.
And unlike the GOP, the Democrats apportion their delegates to the convention proportionally, meaning a second-place finish in a large state still adds to each candidates' delegate tally.
While political pundits often pay attention to momentum gained by a series of wins, "I think people are going to be focusing more on the delegate [counts] now," Devine said.
Both Obama and Clinton are already focusing on the Feb. 5 states; both popped in and out of delegate-rich California last week. Obama headed to Georgia after the Nevada caucuses, and Clinton will be in New York City today, where she is expected to get the endorsement of Dr. Calvin Butts, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church.
Obama faces more pressure than Clinton in South Carolina, where the large African-American vote in the Democratic primary has given Obama an edge in the polls. A loss to Clinton - especially after the New York senator captured a commanding majority of the Latino vote in Nevada - would weaken Obama's argument that he is electable, analysts say.
Edwards, the only southerner in the Democratic race, also faces a critical battle in South Carolina, which is his home state. But Edwards last week refused to call South Carolina a must-win, and his campaign manager insisted Edwards is in the race for the long haul. 