Fallout

Obama won South Carolina with 55% of the vote, over twice Hillary's percentage. Its a total rebuke of the Clintons' tactics. Their strategy to "blacken" Obama, to make him appear as a narrow black candidate instead of a broad candidate backfired. Instead of driving white voters away from Obama - Obama got 25% of the white vote - they drove white voters to Edwards who got 20% of the overall vote. Hillary was reduced to her constituency of white women, which is a not a good thing for her.

From Time:

There was evidence that Obama's victory was also a repudiation of the brand of hard-knuckled politics that both Clintons had brought to the South Carolina contest. Exit polls indicated that Bill Clinton's campaigning made a difference to about 6 in 10 South Carolina Democratic primary voters. But of those voters, 47% went for Barack Obama, while only 38% went for Hillary Clinton. Fourteen percent voted for John Edwards. The Obama campaign gleefully noted that in the mostly black precincts that Bill Clinton visted in Greenville, as much as 80% of the vote went to Obama....

Obama's impressive win meant all the more given the nature of politics in South Carolina, a state whose history is fraught with race and class. Some observers wondered if the state's voters were becoming more racially polarized in the final days before the primary. That speculation was fueled by one late McClatchy/MSNBC survey that suggested Obama could expect to receive no more than 10% of the white vote, half of what the same poll had shown only a week before. But Obama instead won about a quarter of the white vote overall, and around half of young white voters, on his way to a commanding 55% of the total vote (Clinton finished second with roughly 27% and Edwards came in third with 18%). The excitement around Obama's candidacy pushed turnout to record levels - a kind of surge, says Obama strategist Cornell Belcher, that "is something only Barack Obama is capable of bringing to the table."

Will this change the Clintons' strategy? Early indications are no. Bill Clinton gave Hillary's concession speech for her saying that Jessie Jackson won South Carolina too. The Democratic base is really pissed at the Clintons. Daschle, Kerry, they're all coming out of the woodwork to give Bill Clinton what for. Caroline Kennedy has endorsed Obama - an endorsement Hillary wanted for herself. I can only imagine the brunch conversation this morning in the Clinton suite at the Tennessee Hilton. Will they pull Bill off the campaign trail? Doubtful. But something has to change because their tactics over the past two weeks have been a disaster.

The challenge for Obama now is Super Tuesday. 22 states up for grabs. Hillary is polling ahead in California, New York, and New Jersey, all states with lots of delegates. Can Obama pull it out? I hope so.