As we all know by now, the outcome of the South Carolina democratic primary was an earthquake and the fault line went right through the Clinton campaign. Race was a factor in this campaign and was made one by The Clintons – and continues to be.
In a shocking election night, several things stood out to me. The first being Barack’s outstanding win – beating Hillary 2:1. His gratitude speech was one of the best political speeches I have ever heard – it seriously reminded me of the speech in the film Independence Day – given by The President (played by Bill Pullman):
We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore… We will be united in our common interest. [..] We are fighting for our right to live, to exist, and should we win today, the fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the whole world declared in one voice ‘We will not go quietly into the night, we will not vanish without a fight, we are going to live on, we are going to survive, today, we celebrate our Independence Day!
Obama’s speech also beat down the past few weeks of Clintonian hogwash. He called the nonsense of Reagan and race baiting old politics and he warned that there will be more to come.
Then there was the Clinton gratitude speeches – or lack there of. In South Carolina, Hillary Clinton issued a statement to the press stating that Barack had won. A few minutes afterward Bill Clinton took the stage and started talking about himself – no mention of the campaign or Obama. On cable news while this is going on, they showed Hillary leaving the hotel with bags packed (they were toted by the campaign slave behind her) and she headed for the airport. She was in the air on her way to Nashville while Bill was still on stage! Once she was in Nashville, now about 11pm, she told the crowd she congratulated Obama (she was referring to her press release, not a phone call) and she plowed into a long town hall stump speech.
And now we come to John Edwards. His comeback from where he was before the democratic debate in Myrtle Beach was astonishing. I think that was the leading edge of people getting sick to death of Hillary. My feeling is there was a lot of people abandoning Hillary – moving to their second choice of either Obama or Edwards. And there a lot going to Edwards. I think as Super Tuesday gets closer, we will see Edwards gaining significantly and drawing those gains from Hillary. The calls for him to quit the race are immature and unwarranted. He needs those delegates. If he wasn’t in the race, there is no guarantee the votes leaving Hillary would go to John.
Here is my new theory.
Edwards will stay in the race just to garner as many delegates as he can. Hillary, feeling desperate, is trying to get those banned Michigan delegates and she is even stumping in Florida for more banned delegates. Why? She knows she will need them.
Obama will continue to be the leader in the delegate count up until the convention, but won’t have enough to cinch the nomination. Actually, none of the candidates will – they will need the super delegates. The super delegates being old school Dems may throw their weight to Hillary as their early anointed choice. But Edwards could cast his delegates to Obama for some exchange (they have already discussed future strategies) and Obama’s and Edwards’ delegates will have enough to overthrow Hillary and her super delegates.
That said, super delegates have already begun to throw their weight behind Obama. Ted Kennedy being the fucking King of the super delegates will endorse Obama this morning. For him to come out this early and diss the Clintons is telling. Plus Caroline’s article points to the possibility of a full-blown revolt in the Democratic party.
It not only a fight for the soul of the Democratic party, it is a fight for the soul of America.
Edwards will do a lot better once he can get past Hillary Clinton. It is up to us to clear the road.
I found that Obama’s landslide victory overy Clinton^2 was just astoundingly wonderful.
I mean, I was fully expecting this to be a fairly close race with only narrow victories at best. It is becomming more and more obvious that folks just don’t want to put up with the past “this is how DC works” bit. They want something new and different. They are tired of the politicking and all the corrupt BS that has consistanty gone on.
I sincerly hope that Obama is able to set some standards and begin the cleanup of the past 20 years…lord knows we need it.
The best thing about the results in South Carolina was the demographics.
There was a conventional wisdom theory (TM) floating around before the fact that the vote for John Edwards would collapse, because on the day, White South Carolinians would cluster to the white candidate seen as most likely to beat Senator Obama.
Clearly, that conventional wisdom theory (TM) was one of the strategies that Senator Clinton was playing for in the last week. And it blew up in her face. In South Carolina, she did not win a majority of any demographics … we famously know that Senator Obama got the majority of the black vote … but Senator Clinton did not get a majority of black men, black women, white men, white women … she only got a draw with Non-blacks 60+ with Edwards.
An “Anyone but Obama” vote failed to materialize.
Which makes sense. Folks in South Carolina unwilling to consider black candidates on their merits do not tend to be members of the Democratic party … they tend to form a part of the Republican Base. So the “ABO” in South Carolina, like elsewhere in the country, is already locked into the Republican column and cannot swing existing Party Preference patterns.
Which is why, despite all the noise about identity politics and the meme that the Clintons try to spread below the surface that a black man cannot win the Presidency, its still nonsense. The most electable is Edwards, because he is most likely to win in borderline Presidential Republican states like Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina, then Obama, because he is second most likely to be competitive in the key swing states of the past four Presidential cycles, and dead last is Senator Clinton, since she will have the greatest need to sweep the scorecard in those states where she has a plausible chance.