Lots going on today so sorry that I didn't have time to write up the debate as I had hoped to for this site, though the live thread was pretty thorough. Here's a few tidbits from the last 24 hours that you might not find Tucker Carlson holding forth about.

Less than 100 hours now to the NV caucus and turnout is still a massive question mark, that will determine the outcome. All year, I've felt this will be a low-turnout affair driven by activists combined by whatever campaign had the resources and organization to drag in casual, non-activist supporters. All year, I'd hoped that would be Edwards, with a combination of long-term organization, a strong message, momentum from Iowa, and the support of SEIU and Culinary. All year, I'd presumed that if Obama got those breaks instead, as he did in the end, he'd surge past and win handsomely. And all year, I've presumed that the Clinton support was very soft and would melt away when we entered the final 2 weeks, and people started to focus intensely on the race.

I still have no idea if any of that will prove to be prescient or, as is usually the case, I'm way, way off base. In short, its exciting as all get-out to be in a race that nobody has any clue how its going to go Saturday.

I'm still very skeptical that anyone knows who will turnout Saturday so horse-race polling is not really worth the effort, but its breaking news nonetheless.

Reno Gazette-Journal poll shows a three-way dead heat

Obama 32
Clinton 30
Edwards 27

Its done by Research 2000, which is the regular, DC-based firm, that the RGJ hires to do its polling, so they have experience in the state. However, I'm still not sure anyone can figure out what a "likely caucus-goer" is.

Still, this confirms to me that a) Obama has gotten a big media hit out of the endorsements, which may or may not translate into votes on Saturday (more on turnout in a future posting) and b) Edwards still enjoys a high degree of support, though how well that will translate into delegates given the shoestring budget is hard to predict.

The lawsuit filed late yesterday by officers of the Clark County Democratic central committee against the Nevada State Democratic Party has been the talk of the blogs and the press all day as everyone tries to parse the politics of it. I know a bit about this that I'll try to explain here. Its a sordid tale, as I see it that does not reflect well on the state, the Democratic party, or the Clinton campaign.

Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign, a day after a conference call in which casino executives supporting her denounced Obama in the press for opposing gaming in the Illinois state legislature, her campaign dropped a pretty hard-hitting contrast mail piece against Obama.

The good news is that there was also a lot of actual substance being discussed on doorsteps, at least based on my experience today canvassing for Edwards.

Although the Nevada State Democratic Party adopted most of its caucus rules from Iowa, one of the most important differences in next Saturday's caucus will be the 9 "at-large" precincts to be held on major Strip properties to enable, in principle, hotel and casino workers whose shift would otherwise preclude their attendance to participate. There's a lot of confusion and speculation surrounding these sites, but since they are a) likely to account for somewhere between 4 and 10 % of delegates and b) likely to attract media attention, they stand a chance of having an impact on the outcome (or the perception of the outcome) next Saturday.

Jerome invited me to do some posts that would report on the campaigning in Nevada, and I'll try to do so for the next 10 days leading up to the caucus. I'm an active supporter of Edwards and have been volunteering on his behalf in a heavily Democratic assembly district since last summer. I'm a rather low-tier activist  so most of what I can share is only impressionistic but at the least, my area is demographically rather representative of the state as a whole.

The big question that I'm sure is on most people's minds at the moment is what will be the impact of the Culinary and SEIU endorsements of Obama. I've posted earlier that I think its a big boost for him, though I still think its a very wide open race here. Here's why:

Several times people have asked about the rules for the NV caucus, so I'll try to provide a quick explanation here. (I'm not speaking with any authority, though I have read the rules entirely and been trained as a temporary precinct chair. I'm also one of the few thousand people in the state who has attended a precinct caucus before, though the rules are slightly different this year.)

Yesterday the Edwards campaign unveiled the details on the statewide canvass it is running here in Nevada this weekend to kick off its final push towards the Nevada caucus on Jan 19th.

Not only has the campaign's field operations grown steadily since the summer (when an out of state AP reporter's story about the movement of 4 field workers to Iowa wrongly gave a lot of people the impression Edwards was pulling out of the state) but, according to a memo circulated widely by the campaign's western regional director, the Edwards campaign has quietly built the strongest grassroots operation in the state.

Here's how that looks from the ground, from the snakes' eye view of a precinct-level volunteer.