Obama, Clinton face off in a racially charged SC primary

[Wanderer]

This is getting down right dirty

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent 43 minutes ago

Democratic presidential rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton collided Saturday in a racially charged South Carolina primary, prelude to the Feb. 5 coast-to-coast competition for more than 1,600 national convention delegates.

Former Sen. John Edwards was the third contender on the ballot, hoping to benefit from the acrimony between the other two.

South Carolina offered 45 Democratic National Convention delegates, as well as the campaign's first indication of Obama's political appeal in a state with a large black population.

Clinton hopes to become the first woman to occupy the White House, and Obama is the strongest black contender in history.

After playing a muted role in the earlier contests, the issue of race dominated an incendiary week that included a shift in strategy for Obama, a remarkably bitter debate, and fresh scrutiny of former President Clinton's role in his wife's campaign.

Polls opened at 7 a.m. and election officials reported no problems with voting machines as there were in last week's GOP primary after one county's electronic machines failed to function properly.

"Everything's going smoothly," said state Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire.

Clinton and daughter Chelsea greeted voters Saturday morning at a Shoney's restaurant in Columbia. Clinton hoisted babies and wedged into booths to chat with patrons surprised to have their breakfast interrupted by a presidential candidate and a huge media horde.

Patron, M.J. Hassell, 66, said she had agonized over whom to support but finally sided with Clinton.

"I did like Obama's stand on being against the war from the start. But Hillary's got the experience we need," Hassell, who is white, said.

Clinton and Chelsea later sat down for breakfast with California Rep. Laura Richardson, a black congresswoman who was campaigning in South Carolina for the former first lady.

Clinton and Obama swapped accusatory radio commercials earlier in the week.

The former first lady aired an ad saying Obama had once approved of Republican ideas. His camp responded quickly: "Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected." First she, then he, pulled the commercials after a couple of days.

Given the bickering, Edwards looked for an opening to reinvigorate a candidacy all but eclipsed by the historic campaign between Obama and Clinton. He went on the "Late Show with David Letterman" at midweek to say he wanted to represent the "grown-up wing of the Democratic party."

That was one night after a finger-wagging debate in which Obama told Clinton he was helping unemployed workers on the streets of Chicago when "you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart."

Moments later, the former first lady said she was fighting against misguided Republican policies "when you were practicing law and representing your contributor ... in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago."

Each side accused the other of playing the race card, sparking a controversy that frequently involved the former president.

"They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender. That's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here," he said at one stop, strongly suggesting that blacks would not support a white alternative to Obama.

Clinton campaign strategists denied any intentional effort to stir the racial debate. But they said they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as "the black candidate."

By week's end, one poll indicated that Obama's support among whites in the state had dropped sharply, a danger sign for him in the rush of primaries and caucuses that begins on Feb. 5.

The former president's efforts drew criticism from Obama's allies as well as Democrats neutral in the race. "Not presidential," said Tom Daschle, an Obama supporter who was Senate majority leader at the time of Clinton's impeachment nearly a decade ago.

___

Associated Press writers Beth Fouhy and Seanna Adcox in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

[Justforfun000]

Race will always come up. So will gender. To pretend humans can completely ignore such a trait is wishful thinking. The key isn't making it invisible, it's not giving a damn one way or the other.

[Guardsman Bass]

I feel sorry for Obama. He's really in a treacherous situation right now, at the mercy of voters in South Carolina, since even if he wins, if he wins primarily by drawing an overwhelming fraction of black voters, the media will be all over. You'll see yet more headlines about how Obama is in dangerous of becoming the "black candidate".

Of course, this is South Carolina, and its white population may be weird in that regard. Iowans caucused for him successfully, even though it's a far more white state than South Carolina, so we don't know for sure if it would really hurt him.

[Shroom Man 777]

I just hope he wins, goddamn it.

[KlavoHunter]

I'd sooner have Obama behind the desk in the Oval Office than Hillary.

[Invictus ChiKen]

Well as a resident of the primitive backwater that is South Carolina I have voted for Obama.

Earning the wraith of my father that believes every word of him being a Radical Muslim that is a member of a Trinity Christian Church and feels the church is racist because it is proud to be black and committed to Africa. (He feels this negates the Christian part).

He basically started screaming and cussing at me calling me an ignorant fool that wants to live on welfare and wont work...

[Fleet Admiral JD]

Obama projected to win by a sizable percentage over Clinton. MSNBC is reporting exit polls:

Obama 49%
Clinton 37%
Edwards 14%

And of course they're divvying the vote heavily by race. Obama won black voters heavily. The white votes split up with Hillary about 35%, Edwards with 29% and Obama 24%. However, Obama won the 18-29 white bracket, as well as college-educated whites. Non-college-educated whites split between Clinton and Edwards--shocking.

[Fleet Admiral JD]

GHETTO EDIT:

Polls changed to:

Obama 70%
Clinton 18%
Edwards 12%

[Guardsman Bass]

COLUMBIA, S.C. - NBC News declared Sen. Barack Obama as the projected winner in South Carolina's Democratic primary.

Obama won South Carolina by a substantial margin, with Hillary Rodham Clinton running second and John Edwards third, NBC reported.

Obama reached out for victory over Clinton in a racially charged primary, a prelude to the Feb. 5 coast-to-coast competition for more than 1,600 national convention delegates.

South Carolina's primary offered 45 Democratic National Convention delegates, as well as the campaign's first indication of Obama's political appeal in a state with a large black population.

Interviews with voters as they left their polling places indicated about half the electorate was black.

Half the voters said the economy was the most important issue in the race. About one quarter picked health care. And only one in five said it was the war in Iraq, underscoring the extent to which the once-dominant issue has faded in the face of financial concerns.

Roughly half the voters said former President Clinton's campaigning for his wife was very important to their choice.

The exit poll was conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for The Associated Press and the networks.

Democrats clash in South Carolina
All three contenders campaigned in the state on primary day, but only Obama and Edwards arranged to speak to supporters after the polls closed. Clinton decided to fly to Tennessee, one of 22 states holding Democratic primaries and caucuses on Feb. 5

The South Carolina primary marked the end of the first phase of the campaign for the presidential nomination, a series of single-state contests that winnowed the field and conferred co-front-runner status on Clinton and Obama, but had relatively few delegates at stake. That all changes in 10 days' time, when New York, Illinois and California are among the states holding contests in a virtual nationwide primary.

Clinton hopes to become the first woman to occupy the White House, and Obama is the strongest black contender in history.

After playing a muted role in the earlier contests, the issue of race dominated an incendiary week that included a shift in strategy for Obama, a remarkably bitter debate and fresh scrutiny of the former president role in his wife's campaign.

Clinton and Obama swapped accusatory radio commercials earlier in the week.

The former first lady aired an ad saying Obama had once approved of Republican ideas. His camp responded quickly: "Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected." First she, then he, pulled the commercials after a couple of days.

Edwards seizes the moment
Given the bickering, Edwards looked for an opening to reinvigorate a candidacy all but eclipsed by the historic campaign between Obama and Clinton. He went on the "Late Show with David Letterman" at midweek to say he wanted to represent the "grown-up wing of the Democratic party."

That was one night after a finger-wagging debate in which Obama told Clinton he was helping unemployed workers on the streets of Chicago when "you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart."

Moments later, the former first lady said she was fighting against misguided Republican policies "when you were practicing law and representing your contributor ... in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago."

Each side accused the other of playing the race card, sparking a controversy that frequently involved the former president.

"They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender. That's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here," Bill Clinton said at one stop, strongly suggesting that blacks would not support a white alternative to Obama.

Clinton campaign strategists denied any intentional effort to stir the racial debate. But they said they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as "the black candidate."

By week's end, one poll indicated that Obama's support among whites in the state had dropped sharply, a danger sign for him in the rush of primaries and caucuses that begins on Feb. 5.

I'm posting "projected", since the television shows Obama dominating by 70% to Clinton's 18% with 0%, but I figured it would be good to get the official thread under way. Any thoughts?

[Guardsman Bass]

EDIT: " . .. with 0% in"

[Guardsman Bass]

Damn! You beat me to it!

In any case, that's some serious early calling on the basis of exit polls; the television MSNBC channel is still showing only 0% of the votes in. That's a tiny percentage of precincts for them to be calling it on.

[Guardsman Bass]

Damn it! JD beat me to it in the other thread. I guess either just ignore this one, or merge it into the other one.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Meeeeerged.

[Guardsman Bass]

Meeeeerged.

Gracias, senor.

The discussion on MSNBC following this release was interesting; you had a guy at MSNBC's round table arguing that Obama had really overcome the lack of white supporters for him in South Carolina by increasing the projected share of white voters for him from 10% to about 25% - meaning that he's still projected to win largely on the back of black voters.

I would expect much more of the Clintons' quasi-gossipy "mentioning" bullshit, where they oh-so-casually bring up the race issue by saying things like, "Well, Jesse Jackson won in South Carolina too!" Sort of like how one of their supporters in the form of Bob Kerrey oh-so-casually brought up the "Obama is a muslim" bullshit a little while earlier.

[Guardsman Bass]

Edwards is making a stronger showing - with 8% in, he's up to 21%.

[FSTargetDrone]

Yeah, CNN is showing that Obama "wins South Carolina Primary" in "a rout.'

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

An astoundingly convincing victory, same with Iowa. Go Obama!

[Shroom Man 777]

They can do it, man. They can do it!

[Mr Bean]

55% with 81% of the Black Vote... only 81% Obama?

Fun fact:Hillary got the 65+ crowd in huge numbers, in fact that's the only age group she beat Obama in.

In short except for old Black people, everyone voted Obama or edwards, Hillary got the old black people vote, all according to MSNBC. Watching them try to comment on that without being racists was rather amusing. To bad Chris Mathews was nowhere to be seen last night.

*Edit Obama's victory speech
Yes We Can
The man gives a damn fine speech again. Hillary's by contrast was horrible, it was basically a "Nahh who cares about South Carolina?"

[Glocksman]

Hillary's by contrast was horrible, it was basically a "Nahh who cares about South Carolina?"

Heh...but she does care about the voters in Michigan and Florida.
Especially now that after the early states that'd be offended by MI and FL's voting earlier than the DNC wanted them to have already voted.

Ezra Klein has an interesting piece on it.

This is the sort of decision that has the potential to tear the party apart. In an attempt to retain some control over the process and keep the various states from accelerating their primaries into last Summer, the Democratic National Committee warned Michigan and Florida that if they insisted on advancing their primary debates, their delegates wouldn't be seated and the campaigns would be asked not to participate in their primaries. This was agreed to by all parties (save, of course, the states themselves).

With no one campaigning, Clinton, of course, won Michigan -- she was the only Democrat to be on the ballot, as I understand it, which is testament to the other campaign's beliefs that the contest wouldn't count -- and will likely win Florida. And because the race for delegates is likely to be close, she wants those wins to matter. So she's fighting the DNC's decision, and asking her delegates -- those she's already won, and those she will win -- to overturn it at the convention. She's doing so right before Florida, to intensify her good press in the state, where Obama is also on the ballot. And since this is a complicated, internal-party matter that sounds weird to those not versed in it (of course Michigan and Florida should count!), she's adding a public challenge that, if the other Democrats deny, will make them seem anti-Michigan and Florida.

But if this pushes her over the edge, the Obama camp, and their supporters, really will feel that she stole her victory. They didn't contest those states because they weren't going to count, not because they were so committed to the DNC's procedural arguments that they were willing to sacrifice dozens of delegates to support it. It's as hard as hardball gets, and the end could be unimaginably acrimonious. Imagine if African-American voters feel the rules were changed to prevent Obama's victory, if young voters feel the delegate counts were shifted to block their candidate.

A wholly understandable, if yet transparent and contemptible tactic on her part.
Or does anyone seriously believe that she'd give a tinker's damn about Michigan and Florida if they'd gone (or go, in FL's case) for Obama?

[brianeyci]

He basically started screaming and cussing at me calling me an ignorant fool that wants to live on welfare and wont work...

Man, I will be looking soooooooo forward to rubbing it in people like your dad's face when I am working. Dumbasses like rubbing it in student's faces that they don't work for the four years they're in college, but then you get to rub it in their face for the rest of your life you have a college degree and they don't.

==

What the fuck is Edwards still doing? Can't he "sell" himself to either Hillary or Obama to get in as VP? People like thinking that sellouts are immoral, but that is how politics works -- compromise, especially in a leadership convention at least in the rest of the world. But noooooooooooo in America you fight to the last man. By refusing to pick Hillary or Obama, when he's got zero chance of winning himself, he's putting his fingers in his ears and ignoring reality.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

What the fuck is Edwards still doing? Can't he "sell" himself to either Hillary or Obama to get in as VP? People like thinking that sellouts are immoral, but that is how politics works -- compromise, especially in a leadership convention at least in the rest of the world. But noooooooooooo in America you fight to the last man. By refusing to pick Hillary or Obama, when he's got zero chance of winning himself, he's putting his fingers in his ears and ignoring reality.

I don't think he likes the idea of playing second fiddle. I remember something of the like regarding his performance in the last election as Kerry's running mate.

[Guardsman Bass]

He basically started screaming and cussing at me calling me an ignorant fool that wants to live on welfare and wont work...

What the fuck is Edwards still doing? Can't he "sell" himself to either Hillary or Obama to get in as VP? People like thinking that sellouts are immoral, but that is how politics works -- compromise, especially in a leadership convention at least in the rest of the world. But noooooooooooo in America you fight to the last man. By refusing to pick Hillary or Obama, when he's got zero chance of winning himself, he's putting his fingers in his ears and ignoring reality.

He won't be able to sell himself as VP, much less anything else, to the Big Two unless he gets enough delegates to play Kingmaker. Remember, this guy added very little to Kerry's campaign as VP; he carried no states for Kerry, and was weak on the offensive against Bush (plus, I believe Kerry has said that Edwards was essentially always trying to feather his own nest for another Presidential run in 2008).

[Patrick Degan]

Obama crushed Hillary tonight: a nearly 2-1 margin in the popular primary vote, but still trails in the delegate count by 82. The win is still very significant as it keeps Obama's campaign dogging Hillary's heels hard and he is showing plenty of energy and growing confidence while the Clinton camp is starting to show a bit of nervousness and even, in a couple of unguarded moments, desperation.

Hillary's run into a fight she never expected. Even when Obama loses, it's not enough to put him down. Bill could have adapted to this sort of challenge but I don't think she's quite up to it. To win, she will have to pull every party and political trick at her disposal and it will not be pretty.

As for Edwards, he's dead in the water. Expect him to drop out sometime in the next week or two.

[Master of Ossus]

What the fuck is Edwards still doing? Can't he "sell" himself to either Hillary or Obama to get in as VP? People like thinking that sellouts are immoral, but that is how politics works -- compromise, especially in a leadership convention at least in the rest of the world. But noooooooooooo in America you fight to the last man. By refusing to pick Hillary or Obama, when he's got zero chance of winning himself, he's putting his fingers in his ears and ignoring reality.

I don't think he likes the idea of playing second fiddle. I remember something of the like regarding his performance in the last election as Kerry's running mate.

How much money is this costing him, though, to stay in the race? IMO it's irresponsible, at this point, to waste your supporters' money after you have no chance to win like this.