During this election cycle, all the primaries and caucuses so far have taken place on days when I was very busy. Today was no exception: I moved from Vancouver, Washington to Tacoma, Washington, to go to school to learn to be an English as a Foreign Language teacher. It is a long way from Vancouver to Tacoma: the cherries are already blooming in Vancouver, and soon they might be in bloom here. It is an even longer way from the still wintery Northwest to Nevada, where the Democrats held their caucus, or South Carolina, where the Republicans held their primary. But in a way, all of the things that were going on in my day: going to school, trying to find a job, the fact that I was riding subsidized transportation, even my observation of the muddy, turbulent waters of Washington and the climate change it augured, were part of the macro issues of this campaign, even if it was lost in the minutiae of the day.
I followed the race on my iPhone, and while going through a tunnel on a train entering Tacoma, the race was called for Hillary Clinton. The race had been a bit uncertain, mostly because it was a caucus, which means a smaller amount of people are voting, and it was taking place in Nevada, a state with unusual demographics, being split between the city of Las Vegas, with its hordes of young workers in the hospitality industry, and the rest of the state, with an older, more rural electorate. Polling had been sparse, but there was some thought that because much of the state was dependent on workers in the service industry who were interested in what is called Kitchen Table politics, that the race would go to Hillary, the establishment candidate, rather than Bernie Sanders, who seems to attract more ideological voters. That indeed seems to be the case, with Clinton winning with a 53-47% lead, based on a victory in the Las Vegas area. However, too much shouldn't be read into Clinton's victory, because while it was the first contest in a state with a diverse electorate, it still was narrow enough, and under unique enough circumstances, that it doesn't provide much of a roadmap for the many contests ahead.
But on the whole, the Democratic race is still much more predictable than the Republican race. The issues in this race now seem to be about incremental differences in standings, about statements and counterstatements, and sometimes (thank to social media), how many degrees of meta can be put on a Bernie vs. Hillary meme. So while this campaign looks to be long, and competitive, it doesn't look like either candidate will have a breakthrough.