At the end of a week of heated exchanges, veiled racial comments, and charges of he-said-she said, South Carolina voters handed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) a decisive 55% victory on Saturday in the state’s Democratic primary.
The record turnout and a wide majority of African Americans who cast their vote for Obama certainly helped propel him to victory, but so too did the nearly 25% of white voters who also threw their support behind the candidate. In fact, the number of votes cast for Obama alone exceeded the total number of votes cast in the state’s 2004 Democratic primary. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John Edwards (D-N.C.) came in second and third, respectively, at 27% and 18%.
“This was a stunning performance on Obama’s part, given that he’s running against the most powerful political machine we’ve seen in the last 60 years,” says James Taylor, an associate professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. “Now he can go back to that elevated place and talk about big ideas and a united America.”
Ironically, efforts to hurt Obama’s campaign by former President Bill Clinton, who once campaigned as a man from a town called Hope, proved unsuccessful and may even have hurt his wife’s showing in the primary. Taylor says Sen. Clinton’s team must now rethink this strategy and recalibrate its message.
“I believe people wanted to send a message to Bill Clinton. Obama got 80% of the black vote, where a few days earlier it was thought he’d get just 60%. I think the controversy pushed some people over the line,” says Michael K. Fauntroy, assistant professor of public policy at George Mason University.
When asked by a reporter what it says about Barack Obama that it takes two Clintons to beat him, Bill Clinton replied, “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in ‘84 and ’88. And he ran a good campaign; Sen. Obama’s run a good campaign here … ” Many experts view this as a clear attempt to marginalize Obama as a so-called
black candidate. Interestingly, Obama is holding an event in his white grandfather’s hometown in El Dorado, Kansas, on Tuesday, which may have been planned, at least in part, to dispel that notion.Now all three candidates must focus their attention on Feb. 5, also known as Super Tuesday, when 22 states will hold primaries. Obama begins the period leading up to the big day with an endorsement from Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, to whom he has often been compared. In The New York Times Sunday op-ed section, she wrote, “I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president—not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”
This, says Taylor, “is huge. She does not do this loosely or unadvisedly; she understands the power of the Kennedy name and she is the keeper of the JFK legacy.”
In addition, her uncle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the party’s most senior lawmaker, will also endorse Obama this morning at a rally at American University. “That’s a big catch. When he endorsed Kerry, it gave a real boost to his campaign,” says David A. Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
Organization will be key to Super Tuesday success. Fauntroy says, “It’s going to be very different from South Carolina and every other state. The candidates are going to have to use the kind of language that will resonate with voters in a way that’s different from what we’ve seen so far, where much of the attention has been focused on issues of particular importance to a given state. But because on Super Tuesday all of those states are up for grab, it will be difficult to do that. It becomes more of a national primary, whereby national issues rise to the forefront.”
Fundraising will also become a critical issue,
adds Fauntroy. The Super Tuesday states include some of the most expensive media markets in the country, such as New York and California. Obama may have an advantage there, as well, since many of Clinton’s donors have given the maximum, while he’s raised a lot of smaller donations from people who are eligible to give again.The Edwards campaign continues to struggle, with zero primary wins compared to two each by his competitors, but has vowed to keep up the fight. “I think he’s good for Obama in some states, especially the southern ones. He’ll continue to get a good chunk of the white vote, but I think he’ll be taking those votes away from Clinton more than Obama, and if it hurts Clinton, it helps Obama,” says Bositis. And because it’s a numbers game, he adds, if in the end neither Clinton nor Obama have won enough delegates, “it could become a situation of who knows what could happen. Edwards could become a king maker.”