[Posted Jan. 30, 2008]

Big Win For Obama In S.C.;
Now On To Super Tuesday

By Leonard E. Colvin
Chief Reporter
New Journal & Guide
 
         Sen. Barack Obama, who is engaged in a fierce race for the 2008 Democratic nomination, walked away with the win in last week’s South Carolina Primary.

Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama

       Even before the polls closed Saturday (Jan. 26), news agencies such as the Washington Post and CNN were predicting he would win the 45 delegates in South Carolina where more than half of all voters are black. Obama had nearly half of the votes he needed even before 2 percent of the precincts were counted.
      When the final votes were counted, Obama had 55 percent of the vote; candidate Hillary Clinton had 27 percent; and candidate John Edwards had 18 percent.
  “Tonight, the cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion were told a different story by the good people of South Carolina,” Obama told a euphoric crowd after the results came in. “After four great contests in every corner of this country, we have the most votes, the most delegates and the most diverse coalition of Americans we’ve seen in a long, long time.”

      Obama won despite an early hard press against him by the Clinton war machine in South Carolina.  Again Edwards came in third, again, and may soon doom his political ambitions although he campaigned heavily in the state and says he will forge on.

    Race was an issue going into the primary. Former President Bill Clinton, stomping for his wife,  raised the issue of Obama’s viability and ability to win as a candidate who was African American.
Blacks, who make up more than half of the registered Democratic voters in South Carolina, disliked the Clinton assertion that Obama was similar to other black presidential candidates Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who won previous contests.

  Obama has sought to downplay his race, but  with the carpet bombing from the Clintons, the Illinois Senator  has been thrown off  balance seeking to fend off  charges of  him being the “black candidate”.  
     Prior to the South Carolina vote,  polls showed that while Obama’s steady rate of support among Blacks is climbing, the level of support among Whites declined in South Carolina. He pulled a quarter of them.
       Apart from the  huge black turnout in South Carolina, which MSNBC political analysis Tim Curry wrote was better than the GOP reflecting the trend, the race moves to Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.
Democratic and Republican primaries will be held in  25 states to define who will win the respective party nominations. Senator Clinton had been defined as the “inevitable” winner of her party’s nomination but Obama has gotten in her way.  
Obama may do well in state primaries where there is a significant numbers of black votes such as Alabama and Louisiana.  But what about those states with  few black voters?
      Both Obama and Clinton have raised a record $100 million in cash. So either candidate, upon winning the party nomination and national election, could write a page in the nation’s history books as the first of their gender or race to win the nation’s presidency.

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