Barack Obama Buries Hillary Clinton in South Carolina

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted January 26, 2008.

Sen. Barack Obama decisively won South Carolina's Democratic Primary Saturday, where his grassroots, upstart campaign with its defiant message of change and new leadership defeated a formidable new political machine assembled by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, her husband the former president, and administration veterans.

As Obama stayed to celebrate a victory that creates new momentum for a nationwide campaign, Hillary Clinton left for Tennessee and Bill Clinton headed to Missouri.

"After four great contests in every corner of this country, we have the most votes, we have the most delegates, and the most diverse coalition of Americans that we have seen in a long, long time," Obama said to thunderous cheers in the convention center in South Carolina's capital city, Columbia. "In nine short days, nearly half the nation will have the chance to join us in saying we are tied of business as usual, we are hungry for change and we are ready to believe again."

"We are looking for more than a change of the party in the White House," Obama said. "We are looking to fundamentally change the status quo in Washington. It is a status quo that that is bigger than any one party. And they are fighting back with everything they have got."

Obama promised to take his message to the entire country in coming days.

"Yes we can heal this nation," he said, speaking in a preacher-like cadence. "Yes we can seize our future. And as we leave this great state with a new wind in our backs, in a county we love ... We will take the same message we had when we were up and when we were down: When we are many, we are one."

A Decisive Victory

Obama received 55.4 percent of the vote in a record turnout of 532,000 voters. Four years ago, 290,000 South Carolinians voted in the Democratic Primary. On Saturday, Clinton received 26.5 percent -- less than half Obama's vote -- and former Sen. John Edwards, received 17.6 percent of the vote. Obama won all but two South Carolina counties.

"I have called Sen. Obama to congratulate him and wish him well," Clinton said in a prepared statement where she thanked "the people of South Carolina" who welcomed her into their homes and voted for her. "We now turn our attention to the millions of Americans who will make their voices heard in Florida and the 22 states as well as American Samoa who will vote on February 5th."

Clinton's remarks suggest she will make an effort to contest Florida, whose primary is next Tuesday but which has been sanctioned by the Democratic Party for moving its vote ahead of Feb. 5. The state will not be able to award delegates, under the party's rules, but a win there would generate tremendous press as 22 states prepare to vote a week later.

A Hard-Fought Victory

South Carolina was not taken for granted by Obama's campaign, even though pollsters and pundits have noted that nearly half of the state's Democratic Party voters are African-American and are prone to see his candidacy as an issue of racial pride. They frequently noted that Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jr. won the state's Democratic primary in 1984 and 1988.

On Saturday, 15,000 Obama volunteers fanned out across the state to hold signs on street, get voters to polls, monitor the voting process and guard against voter suppression tactics or technical problems with the state's paperless electronic voting machines, said David Axelrod, the campaign manager, meeting with reporters. And as hundreds of volunteers crowded into Columbia's convention center and watched overhead screens with news reports attributing the win to the southern state with the second highest number of African-American Democratic voters -- Georgia is first -- the crowd shouted in unison, "Race doesn't matter. Race doesn't matter. Race doesn't matter."

Axelrod said the voters who have supported Obama in Iowa, where he won the state's caucuses, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina cut across racial and political dividing lines. "There is an appetite for change in this country," he said. "It is in red states and blue states. It is among independents and Republicans."

Obama's primary win appeared to heed lessons from New Hampshire, where the Illinois senator lost in the nation's first primary to Clinton by 7,481 votes. In New Hampshire, his state campaign was not as well-organized as Clinton's campaign, which took advantage of a winter thaw to send swarms of supporters into the streets with campaign signs. In contrast, Obama's campaign focused on reaching voters by phone and door knocking.

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Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of "What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election," with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006).

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