Betting Big on Nevada

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Reid was also careful to distance the campaign from the lawsuit, saying, "It's not our fight. We are too busy campaigning to participate in that argument." His statements are a far cry from Bill Clinton's defense of the lawsuit earlier this week." I would question why you would ever have a temporary caucus site and say only the people that work there, i.e., the people that we know are going to vote in a certain way or we think they are able to caucus," the former President told students at Green Valley High near Las Vegas.

Ironically, the lawsuit could end up hurting Clinton, by disenfranchising some of her core constituents — Hispanics, who account for more than 40% of the union's membership. "There's a lot of people that are kind of upset with the tactics they used, saying 'No, no, no. We had nothing to do with it,' even though the people that filed it are about three steps from the campaign and her husband's out on the trail railing for it,"said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. "The calculation was made that it would be better off having some Hispanics not vote rather than having them vote for Obama."

The Clinton campaign this week also attacked Obama for his past votes against gambling while in the Illinois State Senate. At the time Obama defended the votes, saying that gambling comes with "a moral and social cost" and could "devastate" poor areas. Clinton, meanwhile, has a record supporting gambling and has enlisted the representatives of gambling community to speak out against Obama.

Aside from the union, Obama has a bigger organization and has run more ads than both Clinton or Edwards. He is also benefiting from more than $30,000 in radio advertising that UNITE Here — the Culinary Worker's national union that has also endorsed Obama — is running in the run-up to the caucus. The outside ads are a sore spot with Edwards, who was criticized by Obama for ads run in Iowa on his behalf by unions and private groups. Obama "loudly and repeatedly attacked independent ads by unions in Iowa as the product of special interests,"said Jonathan Prince, Edwards' deputy campaign manager. "But when a different outside group starts running ads on his behalf in Nevada, there's not a peep from him or his campaign." For its part, the Obama campaign says that, unlike Edwards in Iowa, it has no connection at all to the independent ads being run by UNITE Here in Nevada.

Contrary to popular belief Nevada, Democrats have, actually, caucused before. In 2004 a whopping 9,000 people showed up to pick John Kerry as the Democratic nominee in a contest so late in the schedule Kerry was already the presumptive nominee. This time around there will likely be a lot more than that, but nobody really knows how many. Anyone can show up and register the same day for the Democratic caucuses, which could help Obama, who is popular with Independents and moderate Republicans. The outlook is so murky that both the Clinton and Obama campaigns are already downplaying expectations for a victory, each stressing the other's inherent advantages in the state. For a contest taking place in Nevada, no discussion of handicapping the race would be complete without the oddsmakers. So if you want to place a wager on this weekend's caucus, just know that intrade.com has Clinton beating Obama's chances of winning by 58% to 45%.