Not exactly what they had in mind

EARLY LAST YEAR WHEN SEN. HARRY REID and the rest of Official Democratic Nevada got themselves all puffed up about the new and improved role the state would play in the presidential process, they promised unprecedented media attention, interest from the campaigns, opportunities for Nevadans to press candidates on Western and Nevada issues and lots of other good stuff.

They forgot to mention the bloodbath.

Not least among the big promises was that Nevada's caucus would be a great vehicle for strengthening the party's infrastructure and effectiveness. The benefits of the caucus would remain after the caucus itself was long gone.

Sure enough, the party has had to identify volunteers willing to undergo the training and put in the time to help make sure that things go off without a hitch, or that they go off, anyway, at the 520 caucus locations around the state Saturday. That's party-building at a pretty basic level.

And there has been some hope that the outreach performed by the separate presidential campaigns would also help beef up the Nevada Democratic Party to newfound muscle-bound organizational might -- just another feature of the ongoing effort to, as the party's color-conscious apparatchiks like to say, turn Nevada blue.

Residual benefits from the efforts in Nevada on behalf of one candidate or another were always an iffy proposition, as presidential campaigns, especially Democratic ones, are notorious for bugging out of a state after Election Day.

But moreover, Nevada's fling with the nominating process has ripped the party asunder and brought old rifts and resentments out into the open, and it looks like damage to relationships among fellow Democrats, not party-building, will be the lasting legacy of the presidential campaigns.

The most spectacular and publicized example -- the cheesy lawsuit filed by Clintonoids and aimed at closing down at-large caucus locations for casino workers -- reflects a contingent of party insiders and activists who have long been jealous of the influence wielded in the party by organized labor generally and the Culinary Union specifically.

But that's not the only source of discontent being vented, quietly and not so quietly, by party activists and volunteers. Rigging a county party meeting so that one candidate's surrogates get more time to speak, mysteriously ousting temporary precinct chairs and replacing them for scant or contrived reasons -- these things make the eyeballs of normal humans glaze over, but they're the sort of stuff that drives the faithful nuts.

More than one party activist has privately told this damned pundit that when the caucus is over, they won't be giving the party any more free labor. Fortunately, they can't be believed. Staying away is probably more than their dedication (or, in a few instances, their grandiosely distorted perception of their own contribution to current events) could bear.

But maybe there has been a deliberate gaming of the system by party officials to help one candidate (that'd be Clinton) over others. Or maybe some of the vitriol seething up and down party ranks has been fueled by rank incompetence of inadequately supervised mid- and low-level party staffers who think the party's highest powers (that'd be Harry Reid) want the system gamed for Clinton's advantage.

Either way, the effect has been the same: profoundly myopic behavior befitting a teensy, tiny agenda that is just big enough to help undermine, you know, the greater good.

With any luck, the honest and straightforward organizational and administrative work that so many people performed in Nevada over the last few months (bless 'em) will outweigh the party's squirrelly dysfunctional side, and subjecting itself to the weird vagaries of presidential politics will help the state party more than it hurts it. And hopefully, the animosities and tensions among activist and insider Democrats will be, if not resolved, at least set aside so that everybody can get together in time to deliver Nevada to the Democratic nominee, whoever it is.

Oh, needless to say, the Nevada Legislature should scrap the caucus system altogether and switch to a primary.

The lawsuit filed last week that challenged the validity of the at-large locations for casino workers, though a patently cynical and hypocritical bit of campaign trickery designed to suppress voter turnout, nonetheless helps underscore some of the chief offenses committed by caucuses against truth, justice and the American way: The principle of one-person one-vote is tossed in favor of indecipherable formulas that are ripe for manipulation by party hacks. And people are forced to show up at one and only one time. Got a flat tire? No one to watch the kids? Can't get off work? Sorry. No participation in the political process for you.

Caucuses are also aggressively hostile to the cherished notion of a secret ballot. And there is no absentee voting. Indeed, among the most egregious manifestations of the caucus system's assault on morality and justice is the systematic disenfranchisement of troops who are in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When Nevada made its bid to move up toward the front of the nominating process, it was thought a caucus contest was not only preferable, but necessary to winning the early slot because of New Hampshire's worst-in-the-nation law that says that state must have a first-in-the-nation primary. Full-on wonks among you may remember that, initially, Nevada's contest was scheduled to be second in the nation, after Iowa and before New Hampshire.

Since then, the entire calendar went batshit crazy, or as the nation's political establishment termed it, batshit crazy. New Hampshire ended up going before Nevada. But Nevada was still stuck with its stupid caucus.

It should be the last time. The way the country selects a president should no longer be burdened by the assault on democracy that is the caucus system. Nevada can't make the media or the candidates do the responsible, sane thing and quit paying attention to the farce perpetrated in Iowa every four years. But nor does Nevada have to emulate it.

Hugh Jackson is a longtime local journalist, former senior editor of CityLife and the proprietor of the Las Vegas Gleaner (www.lasvegasgleaner.com), where he blogs.