Picketing and reminiscing for Democrat presidential debate
CANDIDATES have hustled past tourists and slot machines to ask housekeepers and cooks for their votes in the back of flashy casinos. They’ve made their pitches over plates of tamales, tacos and soul food. They’ve walked a picket line in the street with union workers. And then, with unsurprising showmanship, there was that flock of pigeons with tiny MAGA hats.
If Nevada has one job in the Democratic primary, it’s to offer something different. And in many ways it has delivered.
As the presidential race turned to the state this week, gone was the earnestness of Iowa and tradition of New Hampshire and in its place was racial diversity, a new unpredictability and the muscle of urban, union politics.
Yesterday, seven casino-resorts on the Las Vegas Strip were among 200 locations hosting sites for the state’s Democratic caucuses.
Meanwhile, in at least three campaign appearances over the past two weeks, Democrat Joe Biden has told a similar story as he tries to revive his campaign in states with more diverse voters. On a trip to South Africa years ago, he has said, he was arrested as he sought to visit Nelson Mandela in prison.
“This day, 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and entered into discussions about apartheid,” Biden said at a campaign event in South Carolina last week. “I had the great honour of meeting him. I had the great honour of being arrested with our UN ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see him on Robben Island.”
Biden referred to his own arrest twice more in the next seven days, including at campaign stops where he spoke of being arrested in South Africa between efforts to coax his wife to marry him. That proposal was in 1977, both Bidens have said. |