Obama wins big in S.C.

January 26th, 2008 at 05:50pm Pat Cunningham

The junior senator from Illinois got the VICTORY he had to have to remain viable.

Exit polling suggests that the negative campaign tactics of Hillary and Bill Clinton backfired today in the Palmetto State.

UPDATE: MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan, always a reliable source of bigotry and nonsense, is trying to downplay Obama’s win.

Buchanan noted a few minutes ago that Obama lost the white vote today by a margin of “3-to-1.”  But so what? He was running against two candidates, not one. The truth is that Hillary lost the white vote by a margin of 2-to-1.  And John Edwards lost it by a margin of 3-to-2.

In other words, none of the three got a majority of the white vote. But it’s pretty impressive that Obama got one of every four white votes in a state with a long history of vicious racism.

(Note: All of these percentages are based on exit polls, which is the only way that demographics are recorded.  Actual election results do not include tallies by race, gender, education or other factors.

(By the way, support for Obama was weakest among whites with the least education. Duh. Big surprise there.)

UPDATE II: Upon reflection, I see today’s results as nothing less than a disaster for the Clintons.

The political narrative suddenly is dramatically different.  Media coverage of the Clinton campaign over the next week or so is going to focus on the failure of the negative stuff in South Carolina. That will hamper efforts by Hillary to get back on-message and to move forward.

Furthermore, Bill Clinton’s usefulness to his wife’s campaign has been seriously diminished.  He’s too closely identified now with the nasty campaign tactics.  And the eagerness with which he’s attacked Obama raises questions of whether he’s running Hillary’s campaign and — more importantly — whether he would run a new Clinton administration.

One other observation on all of this: I’ve noticed in conversations with friends and in perusing the liberal blogosphere that lots of people who felt good about Hillary a week ago, even if she wasn’t their first choice for president, had soured on her (and Bill, too) even before the first vote was cast today in South Carolina.

If Hillary loses her bid for the nomination, she’ll have nobody to blame but herself.

Not Bill? No, it’s her campaign, and she allowed him to help wreck it.

Entry Filed under: Bill Clinton, South Carolina Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama