If you want to know how Sen. Hillary Clinton won a convincing victory in Saturday’s Nevada caucus, look back to a meeting Dec. 15 at William E. Orr Middle School in Las Vegas.

There, Robby Mook, Clinton’s state director, told 600 of the campaign’s most committed volunteers that he wanted to enlist many more supporters to caucus for the candidate -- more than twice what he asked for in August.

It was a startling move coming nearly a year into the Nevada campaign -- and just five weeks before the caucus. It also was a strategic risk because it would divert resources.

Mook’s colleagues in Clinton’s Iowa campaign paid no attention to his move. Turns out, they should have.

Clinton’s Iowa team would be blindsided three weeks later by a big turnout that favored Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. The Clinton team there hadn’t thought to consider Obama might draw out many voters who normally don’t participate in elections.

In Nevada, Mook looked at the landscape and found the following: Democrats, despite the predictions of naysayers, had taken a real interest in the presidential caucus. He feared that the campaign would fail if it limited itself to rounding up support only from voters with a history of participation.

So as he spoke to volunteers that cold December Saturday, Mook’s usual confidence was clearly shaken. Clinton needed to mine the electorate for voters the campaign originally thought would not participate.

It was a tall order. Campaigns have an easier time if they can work from lists of “likely voters.”

“We need to work hard now,” Mook told the group. “If the caucus were held today, we’d do OK. We would not be as successful as we want to be.” . . .

Mook said in an interview Saturday that his staff groaned at the suggestion of expanding the universe of voters, especially to such a radical new goal: Find 60,000 more. Some analysts estimated that was as much as the entire expected turnout statewide. (In August, the Clinton goal was 24,752 supporters.)

Now, not only was Mook pushing for an unheard-of total, he was also brutally honest about the profile of the average Clinton voter at the precinct captain meeting: Clinton supporters “are less likely to turn out,” he said. “They don’t understand the caucus.”

Reaching the new number required immense amounts of motivation, both of the voters and the volunteers trying to reach them.

The motivation came from the campaign and its best surrogates.

The endorsement of Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid was always seen as a good early “get,” but the campaign never expected him to go to the lengths he did.

At precinct captain meetings in August and December, Reid, not known as much of an orator, fired up the troops. His work and commitment made the sale authentic.

“I want you to feel the urgency of what’s going on here,” he said in December before closing with a “Field of Dreams” cliche: “If you do it, she will win.”

Mook played bad cop at the December meeting. He laid out what he expected from volunteers: hard-core supporters about whom the campaign would have no doubts, one volunteer for every 10 supporters, and a pledge to canvass the neighborhood twice a week, work the phones and host parties. No wavering supporters.

Five weeks later -- on Saturday -- Mook’s team hit the number, and the staff members were thanking Mook left and right for giving them the bigger goal, he said.

The Nevada caucus turned Iowa on its head. There, Clinton hit her original goal but was deluged by the Obama turnout. Here, the turnout was nearly double the 60,000 forecast -- standing at 115,800 late Saturday with 2 percent of precincts yet to report.

One precinct in a middle-class Las Vegas neighborhood showed the success of Clinton’s effort.

State Sen. Steven Horsford, a supporter of Obama, said the vote goal in his precinct was 29. Obama surpassed it easily with 45.

Clinton had 58.

Mook credited the Clinton precinct captains: “I give a lot of credit to our precinct captains. We came out of Iowa, and we never felt like we were losing them.

People had a personal relationship with the campaign.”

Those precinct captains had to adjust midstream to an influx of voters no one expected. But because the campaign found them and nailed down their commitment, they were ready to take on the new goal.

Mook had set the much higher target because he was picking up signs of increased interest in the caucus.

The signs were clear to anyone watching: Democrats eager, even desperate to take back the White House, running a strong roster of candidates with talented field organizers. And December polling in Iowa and New Hampshire showed close races.

But not everyone was so savvy. The campaign of former Sen. John Edwards, for instance, was using a turnout model of 45,000 total voters, according to a campaign official.

Aside from heavy turnout, the Clinton camp made another smart strategic move that was aided and abetted by a strategic blunder: Although the Clinton team won’t admit it publicly, the campaign had been working Culinary Union members hard and organizing them for the past year. The effort recognized that because the union was waiting so long to make an endorsement decision (it didn’t come until 10 days ago), the campaign could peel off members and get them committed and working while the union dithered. The result was a surprising victory at seven of the nine special Strip caucus sites.

Most remarkable about this organizational drive is that it required secrecy -- if the Culinary found out, the union would have worked to shut it down.

And even though Clinton fared well at the Strip sites, she also benefited from the lawsuit filed to have the sites closed, according to interviews with voters, who expressed anger that Culinary workers -- and by extension, Obama -- were given disproportionate influence in the total delegate count because of the at-large sites.

The claim about delegate allocation wasn’t true, but many voters believed it to be so, which is all that mattered.

The Culinary is 49 percent Hispanic, and Clinton dominated among Hispanics statewide, according to exit polling.

Although the Clinton victory was decisive, especially with women, her victory among Hispanics was especially striking, beating Obama 2-1 with a demographic that comprised 15 percent of the voters, according to exit polls.

This was evident in Clinton’s campaigning the past 10 days, when she aggressively courted Hispanics and hit the issues they cared about. Lately, that means the economy and the mortgage foreclosure crisis, which is hurting working-class Hispanics especially.

“We refused to take it for granted and worked very, very hard knocking on doors multiple times,” Mook said. “We focused on the doors.”

Democrats are crowing again that many more voters came out for their contest today in Nevada than for the Republicans'.

The Nevada Democratic Party reported that with 84 percent of precincts reporting, a record 107,000 people attended the caucuses. That compares to about 34,000 on the GOP side with 78% of precincts reporting.

The Democratic National Committee argues that the "enthusiasm gap" bodes well for the general election in November.

Already turnout records (measured here in terms of actual votes cast) have been smashed in Iowa and New Hampshire, most spectacularly by the Democrats but also by the Republicans as well. And it is likely that the all-time high for a primary season of 35 million votes cast, set back in 1988, will be surpassed this year by millions and millions of votes.  . . .

While the huge turnouts would appear to be a big plus for the Democrats, they may not necessarily be a favorable harbinger for the party in November. The nationwide primary record for the Democrats of 23 million votes was set in 1988, a year the party went on to lose the presidential race. The primary record for the Republicans of 17.2 million votes was set in 2000, a year the GOP went on to win the White House (albeit narrowly).

In short, when it comes to presidential primaries, high voter involvement can have either a positive or a negative connotation depending on the tenor of the party's nominating campaign.

The Democrats in particular have had a number of "negative" high turnouts, where friction between various wings of the party produced substantial voter interest but a badly scarred nominee with little chance of winning the general election.

"...This kind of squabbling, how many children is this going to get health care? How many people are going to get an education from this? How many kids are going to be able to go to college because of this?"

In an address to a group of state GOP executive directors at the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) winter meeting, Rove outlined talking points for ways to defeat leading Democratic candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.). The former adviser to the president did not mention former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.).

On Clinton, Rove said the senator talks about fiscal responsibility but has introduced “$800 billion in new spending and the campaign is less than half over.”

Rove said that “the woman” wants to repeal all of Bush’s tax cuts, and that she can be targeted for voting against “troop funding” in the form of her votes against the Iraq war supplementals.

Specifically, Rove hit Clinton for what could have been her worst campaign moment last year, when she had trouble answering a question about driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants at the Democratic debate in Philadelphia.

“You know, Sen. Clinton [has] got a problem with giving straight answers in this campaign,” Rove said. “I thought that was an incredible moment. In the course of 15 minutes, I counted her giving about four different answers.”

The Bush confidant also trotted out one of the lines of attack the RNC has already been working feverishly against Clinton, questioning why she and former President Bill Clinton will not release records from their time in the White House. This, according to Rove, “raises legitimate questions about what she’s hiding.”

Rove made it clear that most Republican attacks on Obama would focus on his “accomplishments and experience.”

“He got elected three years ago, and he [has] spent almost the entire time running for president,” Rove said.

Rove added that Obama has only passed one piece of legislation during his time in the U.S. Senate, and during his time in Illinois state Senate, Obama had “an unusual habit” of voting “present” instead of yes or no.

Rove also said that nonpartisan ratings show that Obama is more liberal than Clinton, which he said is “pretty hard to do.”

Time and again, however, Rove returned to the trump card he used in his successfully executed 2002 and 2004 elections, saying that neither Obama nor Clinton is prepared to protect the country from terrorists.

Rove served notice that Obama and Clinton would be targeted over how they vote on any Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation that comes before the Senate this year.

“Do they or do they not want our intelligence officials to be listening in on terrorists’ conversations in the Middle East who may … be plotting to hurt America?” Rove said.

He told the state officials that it would be their responsibility to find “creative and sustaining ways” to “talk about these contrasts.”

Rove also offered advice to whichever Republican candidate wins the GOP nomination.

He said the candidates had to first “create a sustaining narrative about themselves.” Then he said the candidate should “immediately engage” on the “kitchen table issues,” like healthcare, education, jobs and the economy.

Third, Rove said the GOP nominee has to show that he is serious about campaigning “aggressively in places where Republicans don’t usually campaign.” Rove said that includes among black, Latino, Asian and union voters.

“We’re going for everybody,” Rove said.

Lastly, Rove argued that the Republican candidate must show the electorate “that they understand the surge is working.” Rove said the candidate should get firmly behind the war effort, painting the Democratic nominee as “defeatist.”