Let me go on a limb here and say that Independent voters aren't going to vote for Dems in this environment.
I think you're missing what people are saying - In Nevada in particular, most new/younger voters are automatically registered as Other since 2020. So it's possible that a lot of those "other" voters are younger voters, which could tilt the "Independent" margins.
Younger. Voters. Aren't. Voting.
Unaffiliated voters in Nevada who have cast votes so far are 18% under 40. At this point in 2020, this number was 33%.
Aren't early voters traditionally older usually though? 2020 was an exception due to Covid, no reason to expect those patterns to continue. Not that that isn't a rather worrying sign, although I'd be more interested in seeing the total numbers of all parties than just unaffiliated.
