The Democratic primary in South Carolina will not have a decisive effect in the campaign, but it shakes things up. by rtbohan
(libertarian)
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The polls in South Carolina closed at 7:00 p.m. At 7:02 the Associated Press announced that Senator Barack Obama had won. The projection was based on exit polls, and the A.P. further announced that, based on interviews with nineteen voters in four precincts,they could give the breakdown of which groups voted for which candidate.
I genuinely despise this type of reporting, but in this case the actual votes seem to have proven the A.P.'s guess right. It also showed that my earlier guess that John Edwards would benefit from Republican voters in the Democratic primary was wrong.
The temperature in South Carolina for the Democratic primary was low, as it was for the Republican primary a week earlier. But the skies were clear and the sun was shining all day. The result was that more voters turned out than the week before. And the result was a resounding victory for Senator Barack Obama. It appears that he received more than fifty percent of the vote in a three-way race. He carried every county but one and defeated Senator Hillary Clinton by two to one. Senator John Edwards, who, I thought, might do well with Republican cross-over votes finished third, with less than twenty percent of the vote in the only state he carried four years ago.
Senator Obama's victory will not guarantee him the Democratic nomination. The latest polls in Florida show him well behind Senator Clinton, and it is not clear that the victory in South Carolina will have much influence with the vastly different electorate in Florida. After the Florida comes Super (or Super Duper) Tuesday. Senator Obama can compete well in some of these states, but part of that depends on whether he can do well with the press, and if Senator Clinton, her husband, and her organization pursue the same ham handed tactics that they used in South Carollina. In South Carolina, Senator Obama was the choice of all the major newspapers. Senator Clinton seems to have a lead on him with the press in the coming contests.
If Senator Clinton intends to win the coming contests, she will have to change her approach and tell her husband to go home and stay there. In South Carolina she used her husband as point man in her campaign. The subtly racist and sexist approach the two of the used dimished them in them both in the eyes of the voters. It not only raised the question of who would really be President if Hillary should be elected, but reminded even Clinton fans of what Bill Clinton was like, and possibly even how close his electoral victories were, Senator Clinton, more subtly than her husband, appealed to black women to vote for their gender rather than their race, and this might have worked had the very public and less subtle remarks of her husband off=set her efforts. While it migh have persuaded some black women to vote for her, but probably convinced even more black men to vote against her.
For John Edwards this was an even worse day than the day of the Nevada primary. He undoubtedly will be able to go on campaigning, but it really will not matter. His supporters in South Carolina were talking of his being a great choice for whoever wins the nomination as a candidate for Vice President. But the last candidate who used him in that capacty is apparently unwilling to give him a letter of reference, and his performance does not, this year, suggest that he would add to the strength of the the ticket.
For South Carolina, and particularly for the Democrats in the state, this was also a good day. While everybody assumed that the majority of black voters would support Senator Obama, the unspoken assumption was that an Obama victory would only be accomplished along a racial divide. The sweeping nature of Senator Obama's victory showed that, whatever their expectations in voting in the primary, thiswas not a white vs. black contest. For South Carolinians of whatever race or party who are tired of South Carolina being portrayed as the poster child for racism in the national press today's outcome was a victory for the state as well as Senator Obama.
Senator Obama is, of course a liberal Democrat. This means that he supports more government infervention in the economy, in medicine and in the private lives of citizens. The fact that his approach is slightly less totalitarian than that advocated by his two remaining rivals for the Democratic nomination is not eneough to win him support from conservatives or libertarians.
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 2
thumbs so far
The views expressed
in this article are those of rtbohan only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
rtbohan is solely responsible for the contents
of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated
with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
