Maybe there’s a reason this isn’t as beyond the pale as it looks. But I’m not seeing it.

The Nevada State Democratic party has set up nine at-large caucus locations on the Las Vegas strip for casino workers who might not otherwise be able to caucus on January 19th. Remember, because of the recent Culinary Workers Union endorsement of Barack Obama, casino workers are expected to vote heavily for him.

Now, the Nevada State Education Association (the state teachers’ union), which is seen as supportive of Clinton though it has not formally endorsed her, is suing the Democratic party to prevent those at-large caucuses from meeting on the grounds that similar arrangements have not been made for other Nevadans.

I don’t know the particulars of how the Nevada caucuses are arranged. But the ‘tell’ is the fact that the teachers’ union apparently didn’t think this was a problem until Sen. Obama bagged the key union endorsement. When asked why the union had never approached the state party about this issue until Friday, union president Lynne Warne, tellingly replied, “We’re approaching them now.”

If there’s one thing that’s core to the modern Democratic party is that voter suppression tactics are always wrong. Much of the US Attorney purge scandal was at root about Republican voter suppression tactics. I suspect this is doubly wrong — both in the sense that the suit is meritless on its face but certainly also in the sense that you don’t decide how easy to make it for people to vote depending on who you think they’re likely to vote for.

Please leave these shameful tactics to Republicans.

Late Update: Jeralyn at TalkLeft thinks there is some substantive merit to the suit. And in the abstract, she may have a point. But following on the distinction I drew above, I think the timing tells the story.

Later Update: ABC’s Jake Tapper has more details.

I don’t talk much about international economics because most of it is beyond my comprehension. But am I right to be unnerved by the fact that as a result of the mortgage crisis big chunks of major US-based financial services companies — Citibank, Merrill Lynch, etc. — are being bought up not by foreign owners of capital but, in effect, by foreign governments?

Endorsements don’t usually count for much. But if they’re big enough and come at critical moments they can count for a lot. And this string of endorsements Obama has picked up since his narrow defeat in New Hampshire four days ago is, I believe, a major story that has not gotten the attention it deserves.

Since losing the New Hampshire primary four days ago, Obama has been endorsed by Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ). Additionally, he’s also been endorsed by Rep. Miller (D-CA), Sen. Kerry (D-MA) and Ned Lamont. But they’re in a slightly different category and it’s the first four I want to discuss.

The first of these came from Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) who put out word he’d be endorsing Obama the day after New Hampshire. Johnson is a protege of former Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD). And Daschle has close ties to Obama — a lot of operatives in the Daschle world went to Obama after 2004. So when I saw word of the endorsement I figured this was something Daschle or his former staffers had helped put together to help stabilize Obama’s fortunes after the New Hampshire loss.

But now you have three others — Nelson, Napolitano and McCaskill. Nelson and Johnson are from very red states while Napolitano and McCaskill are from swing states.

Now, there are a bunch of things you can draw from this spate of endorsements. One is that these folks don’t seem worried about themselves running or having their supporters run with Obama at the top of the ticket. And these are people from either very conservative or somewhat conservative states. Despite the fact that Obama is running in some ways to the right of Clinton (at least tonally, as the candidate of unity and bipartisan reconcilation), there are still a lot of questions inevitably being asked about whether the country is ‘ready’ for Obama, whether that’s his race, his name, his background in community organizing, his youth, etc. So these folks think America’s ready; in fact, more ready than they are for Hillary.

But that isn’t the biggest significance. The key is timing. You don’t hit a big time politician like Hillary Clinton when she’s down unless you’re really against her and you’re fairly confident she’s not getting back up. After winning in New Hampshire, albeit narrowly and after the clobbering in Iowa, there’s been a sense that Clinton may be back on track to consolidating her frontrunner status and perhaps following a modified version of the standard script in which the anointed frontrunner gets a scare in the early states before mopping up the competition as the race goes national. But these four clearly don’t want that to happen. In fact, they’re sticking their necks pretty far out to help make it not happen. And their endorsements, coming right now, tell me they have some confidence it won’t.

After two polls showing roughly a tie between McCain and Romney in Michigan, a new McClatchy/MSNBC/Mason-Dixon poll shows Romney with an eight point lead.

We seem to be at the point where there are now two credible possibilities. One is that the Clinton campaign is intentionally pursuing a strategy of using surrogates to hit Obama with racially-charged language or with charges that while not directly tied to race nonetheless play to stereotypes about black men. The other possibility is that the Clinton campaign is extraordinarily unlucky and continually finds its surrogates stumbling on to racially-charged or denigrating language when discussing Obama.

Bob Johnson’s claim that he wasn’t referring to Obama’s admitted youthful drug use is too silly to even repeat. Indeed, the logic of his remarks make no sense if he was referring to Obama’s time as a community organizer.

Let’s review what Johnson said …

And to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood –­ and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book –­ when they have been involved.

Now, the clear logic of this statement is that the Clintons were fighting the good fight back when Obama was just off goofing off. Being a community organizer is like the epitome of engaged involvement in community issues. So Johnson’s statement literally makes no sense if it’s a reference to Obama’s time as a community organizer. So Johnson should just shut up or be a man and admit that it was a reference to Obama’s admitted youthful drug use.

And if it’s community organizing, why is it unmentionable?

The pretty obvious aim of Johnson remark was to push an image of Obama as some sort of street hustler.

That said, I continue to think most of the statements from the Clinton’s themselves are being distorted or just made into things they weren’t. Like the ‘fairy tale’ line, for instance. I cannot see any interpretation of these comments that can credibly be said to have any racial subtext whatsoever.

Here’s the full quote from Bill Clinton …

First, it is factually not true that everybody that supported that resolution supported Bush attacking Iraq before the U.N. inspectors withdrew. Chuck Hagel was one of the co-authors of that resolution, the only Republican Senator that always opposed the war, every day, from the get-go.

He authored the resolution to say that Bush could go to war only if they didn’t cooperate with the inspectors and he was assured personally by Condi Rice, as many of the other Senators were. So, first, the case is wrong that way.

Second, it is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years and never got asked one time, not once, “Well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn’t know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you’re now running on off your Web site in 2004 and there’s no difference in your voting record and Hillary’s ever since.”

Give me a break.

(APPLAUSE)

This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.

Now, as it happens, I agree with Clinton on point one, at least to a degree. On point two, it’s narrowly accurate but willfully misleading since it ignores the context of the remark. But the ins and outs of Obama’s position on Iraq are a separate issue. To my reading the ‘fairy tale’ line is unambiguously a reference not to Obama but to the claim that Obama always opposed the war. And I do not see how that can be construed as a racially-charged remark or demeaning to Obama as a black man.

I know it sounds like I’ve just said two contradictory things, in least in the context of this controversy. But that’s how it looks to me.

Before I mentioned BET founder Bob Johnson’s already notorious comments about Obama’s youthful drug use. But just after those comments he said this …

That kind of campaign behavior does not resonate with me, for a guy who says, ‘I want to be a reasonable, likable, Sidney Poitier ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’ And I’m thinking, I’m thinking to myself, this ain’t a movie, Sidney. This is real life.”

Still not racially charged? Reasonable? Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

TPM Reader ML on the fracas …

I think that the Clintons’ anti-Obama strategy is more subtle than commentators are realizing. It is in the nature of a “provokatsiia”, as the Russians say. Cuomo didn’t utter the phrase “shuck and jive”without forethought; nor did Clinton bring up LBJ and MLK on the spur of the moment. Both are experienced street-fighting politicians who don’t say that kind of thing to the press without thinking it through. Such comments are a provocation, waving a red cloak in front of the Obama people. When they respond angrily with charges of racism, suddenly they look like Jessie Jackson redux…just the kind of angry, militant black folks who scare white people (btw I think black anger and militancy are completely understandable…this is just a point about how much of the white public reads such charges of racism). Then the Clintons deny responsibility.

The whole point was to get the Obama people to respond angrily, which they did. Clintons win.

There are new national polls out tonight from NYT/CBS and WaPo/ABC. And we’ll be bring you more details on the numbers shortly.

But for the moment, let’s look at Rudy Giuliani numbers and how well his campaign is going.

The Post has done a poll with a likely voter screen the last three times, this month, early last month and in early November. In early November Rudy was at 34%. A month later he was at 25%. Today he’s at 15%. The Times meanwhile has Rudy dropping from 22% to 10% over the last month among Republican primary voters.

Kos is leading the charge for Democrats to vote for Mitt in Tuesday’s Michigan primary. Here’s what a TV ad reaching out to Romney Democrats might look like:

It’s starting to look like the lack of a contested primary on the Democratic side may turn out to be a huge boon for John McCain in Michigan. Wisely or not, Mitt Romney has staked everything on a comeback in his home state. And polls over the weekend have scattered between ones with him and McCain holding the lead.

But the Zogby poll out this morning shows that while Romney is beating McCain 30%-20% among Republicans, he’s getting swamped by independents and Democrats who plan to vote in the GOP primary, yielding McCain a slim 27% to 24% lead overall.

With Giuliani in political oblivion and Thompson ready for a nap, the GOP race could go a decent way toward being over tomorrow night.