Obama vs. the Clintons

It's looking like Barack Obama has won the South Carolina primary by a huge margin over Hillary Clinton, fueld by an estimated 80% of the votes from black voters and a big margin among young/first-time voters.

It's a big enough margin that all the networks and the AP were calling the race as soon as the polls closed at 7 pm EST, based solely on the exit polls with 0% of the official results in.

Clinton, like in Iowa, is in a dogfight with John Edwards to stay out of third. What does it say that four contests into the 2008 campaign, Hillary is battling just to stay out of third?

Simple--a lot of Democrats don't like her either.

Realclearpolitics.com linked to an interesting Jonathan Chait opinion piece in the L.A. Times, Is the right right on the Clintons? Hillary's campaign tactics are causing some liberals to turn against the couple.

We've gone down this road before; after Iowa, I was pretty certain Obama would take New Hampshire and pretty much sweep the table. I wasn't expecting Hillary to shed tears while simultaneously unleashing hubby Bill's attack tactics, which seemed to work in the contrarian Granite State.

Curious to see what the Clintons pull out starting tomorrow... nobody likes losing, but their ugly side really seems to come out after these things, even if it seemed to have led to a backlash in South Carolina.

My guess is the Clintons are going to try and paint Obama as winning because of blacks, sending the message to white voters that they need to choose sides. Which is ridiculous, given that Obama won Iowa and, as Carl Bernstein just said on CNN, "damn near won all-white New Hampshire."

Hillary's desperate and scared enough that she's doing anything and everything; when this campaign started--3 years ago?!--there was no way she envisioned Bill would be rampaging around the South like Sherman, scorching Obama and essentially playing junk yard dog so she could wash her hands of it all.

It's a huge problem for Hillary; she's essentially eating her seed corn, making herself seem less like her own person and leaving herself open to Republicans running against Billary if she does manage to make it to the general election.

On to Super Tuesday, with 22 states in play; Hillary's still ahead in all of the key ones, except for Illinois and Georgia--but her margin over Obama has been shrinking.

It's ironic given the shameful racial politics in South Carolina that the Clinton camp is touting the key role of the Hispanic vote on Super Tuesday, based mostly on her success with Hispanics in Nevada. I've written before about the dynamics of the African American/Latino electorates in the 2008 race; it'll be interesting to see if Hispanics decide to stick with the status quo Clintons, or sign on to Obama-mania.

Given the relative youth of the Latino voter, I think they're going to give Obama a hard look; there's just over a week before Super Tuesday, the tidal wave out of South Carolina, coupled with the increasingly toxic Clintons, will definitely help make up some minds.

Uncredited photo found in numerous places online.