The morning after South Carolina

Size matters.

Not always, but in the matter of Barack Obama's much-bigger-than-expected triumph in South Carolina's Democratic presidential primary, it certainly does. Here are some of the questions raised by his 2-to-1 margin of victory over Hillary Clinton:

-- Will Bill Clinton rein himself in?

His campaigning in South Carolina appears to have helped turn a probable loss for his wife in South Carolina into a spanking. And a parting comment he made concerning Jesse Jackson may hurt her standing even more among black voters in future primaries.

The ex-president clearly is not going to vanish from the trail (especially when there's so much ground to cover leading up to Super Tuesday). And many of the states with Feb. 5 contests -- including most of the major ones -- are friendly turf for the Clintons. So we'll be watching for a change of tone from him in the next few days: An emphasis on reminding Democrats what they revered about him, rather than offering asides about Obama or venting various frustations.

-- Will Obama get a sustained boost from his South Carolina win?

If he does, he'll be the first -- in either party -- in this campaign. As we've noted before, so far the series of single-state faceoffs have had limited, if any, effect ...

on the next. Obama's showing in South Carolina is a much-needed sendoff for him now that he must focus on more than 20 states at once, but its impact is likely to fade quickly.

Unaddressed by the South Carolina results, for instance, is whether Obama can make any inroads into the advantage Hillary Clinton enjoys among Latino voters, who are a crucial bloc in several of the Feb. 5 states. His mentions of Latinos in his Saturday night victory speech were telling, but rhetoric alone won't do the trick. We'll be watching for evidence that Obama's campaign has spent some of the massive amount of money it's raised on targeting the Latino vote.

-- What's up with the polls?

They missed the winner in New Hampshire. They missed the sweep of Obamania in South Carolina.

Obama moved ahead to stay in surveys of the state following his win in the Iowa caucuses. And a couple of the most recent polls gave a hint that he was going to win big. But none came close to presaging an almost 30-percentage-point margin. The final average for the polls aggregated at RealClearPolitics.com had him up by 11.6 points.

Maybe it's the unpredictability of large turnouts dropping off the numbers. Whatever, perennial warnings about the potential imprecision of polling for primaries clearly have needed to be heeded.

-- Don Frederick 

Comments

[Toon Moene]

What's amiss with polls ?

Nothing is amiss but our interpretation of them.

Consider the following (not entirely out of thin air): Poll on Friday before primary counts: Obama 41 %, Clinton 25 %, Edwards 19 %, undecided 100 - 41 - 25 - 19 = 15 %.

Unfortunately for those trying to interpret these numbers as probable outcomes of the primary forget that "undecided" *means* undecided. And those people make up their minds at the last moment, often on the basis of something happening the last hour.

So the "margin of error" of this poll is not "3 or 4 %", but 15 + 3 or 4 % ~ 20 %.

E.g., even though I'm heavily in favour of Clinton, because I think only the Clinton machine can save the faltering US economy, in the poll booth I probably would have gone for Obama, for nothing else than the repeated message during the week that "white people won't vote for a black guy".

Boy, are you lucky I'm European and not voting in your elections !

[Julio]

Why did Bill Clinton wait until the voters of South Carolina had voted to make his point about Jesse Jackson and Barrack Obama? From what I've read so far the Jesse Jackson family household is politically divided in their choice for the democratic primary, with Jesse and his son the congressman being in favor of Obama. While Mrs Jackson instead preferring Hillary. One thing we can now say for sure is that Bill Clinton has caused Hillary to lose her vote, and God only knows how many more.
But Bill Clinton is a calculated conniving closet racist who hopes to gain votes from racist white democrats who far outnumber the blacks who will vote against his wife because of such statements. Congressman Clyburn said he "recoiled" at the remark by Clinton. He needs to read more on the man:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120104819435508233.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

That's right! A man who says whatever has to be said in order get his way.
I never was one to call him the "first black president". Tom Delay correctly said recently that Bill Clinton was only sucessful because he pushed the republlican agenda, by signing into law 90 percent of the republican contract with america program. If he makes it back to the white house, we'll indeed get what we deserve.

[ArchiesBoy]

I'm sick and tired of Billary and their tactics. If Bill had kept his pants zipped years ago, Gore would have been president, Iraq never would have happened, and we would have been moving in on global warming. My vote goes to Obama.

[avraamjack]

-----CLINTON SLEEZE FATIGUE WILL INVIGORATE GOP, DISPIRIT DEMOCRATS AND SINK DEMOCRATIC TICKET-----

-----EDWARDS/OBAMA TO WIN-----

It is possible that Senator Clinton is the best candidate. However, even though many may like the policies that Senator Clinton proposes, they should also consider her record, just as Senator Clinton insists.
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The last Clinton Administration, when faced with the fact that protection rackets where assaulting, torturing and murdering people with poison and radiation, chose to avoid its responsibilities to incarcerate the criminals and to protect the citizenry.
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Instead, they made a deal with the criminal gang stalker protection rackets to leave them alone and to consequently abandon the citizenry.
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Do we want a President who sells out the citizenry for votes?
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Do we want a President who sends a "crime does pay" message to society?
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Would you vote for a President who signed nonaggression deals with the KKKlan or the Nazi party? Gangs that torture with poison and radiation are much like the KKKlan and Nazi Party.
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We do not need a sellout President. We need a principled leader President.
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If you are one of the few who do not know what the above refers to, do a web search for “gang stalking” to see the tip of the dirtberg. Please do it before you decide to reply to my post. Here let me make it easy for you: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22gang+stalking%22.
.

[Mo]

The Clintons race baiting continues. How troubling. I've been terribly disappointed in the Clintons - two people I once respected highly. I hope Americans of all backgrounds vote against this divisive and destructive style of politics. Race-baiting will hurt the democratic party.

Sen. Obama offers leadership for all Americans - regardless of race, ethnicity, background, or religion. As the son of an Immigrant to this country and a man with family living in other countries, he understands the Immigrant Experience like no other President ever has. As the son of a white mother and a black father, he understands and connects with white Kansans as easily as he does black Chicagoans. Regardless of what the Clintons tell us, Obama's candidacy is not about race.

The Clintons are highly qualified and intelligent politicans, but they should not be permitted to be dishonest about the record. Obama is exceptionally and uniquely qualified for this job - he's older than Bill Clinton was when he was running for President in 1992, and Obama was writing law as a legislator when Hillary Clinton was a corporate lawyer in Arkansas sitting on the board of Wal-Mart. He's taught constitutional law at a leading law school, served as president of Harvard's law review, worked as a civil rights attorney, organized inner city communities winning victories on big issues like asbestos and job retraining. His legislative record on the state and federal level is powerful (for more information see Newsweek article entitled "the incremental revolutionary.")

Make the courageous vote. Vote for united America and a united Democratic party. Vote Obama in '08!

[Mo]

Last nights victory shows that Obama can and will pull this off. He's the real deal. Not because he's a good orator, or because he's full of hope. Obama is the right person for the job because he understands that a President can't make real policy progress without commanding a consensus. When we have no consensus we have 50/50 splits. we have impeachments and contested elections. we have damage to democracy.

when a president commands a consensus, he gets policy mandate.

what the Clintons cannot do is win independents or republicans over. when ever something goes wrong, they point the finger, they deploy surrogates and code words. Those are smart politics but they are ultimately destructive to all of us. Independents realize this. thats why they'll go to mccain before they vote for Hillary.

I respect Hillary immensely. She's an important figure that is due respect and admiration. her supporters are intelligent people. But they arent thinking big picture. they arent thinking about what it takes to grow the Democratic party. It takes a leader like Obama - a smart and exceptionally qualified person ready to lead ALL americans from day one.

[FJ Stratford]

Obama supporters wake up. Obama is running a racist campaign.

Obama's camp compared their victory over Clinton in Iowa to OJ Simpson's murder of his white wife. "The natural reminder here is O.J. [Simpson] -- how does an African American candidate attack a white woman?" said Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), a fellow Black Chicagoan whose father ran for president twice in the 1980s.

That was waaaaaay back in January. And the media covered it up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDaO7N-JujU

This is how Washington Post buried the information by ignoring its racist tone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/04/AR2008010400117.html

[Independent Impressed]

I am an independent and am very impressed by the size of this victory. It will make me all the more likely to vote for Barack Obama, an extraordinary candidate!

[Brandon H.]

As a 22 year-old African-American I cannot wait until my Caucasian & Latino friends get to vote on Feb. 5th. It’s no secret that people like to support people who look like them but this is ridiculous. This man has no experience--would you let a third-year 3rd-year med student do open-heart surgery on you…NO. This means political war and I have distanced myself from some of my family who blindly support Obama because he is black. My city (Memphis) does the same thing—I guess some people love mayors that do nothing as a city declines, but my Mom & dad got a clue and moved to the county, outside of city limits. I am currently in grad school and I want all you Obama supporters to email me at bhubbar@yahoo.com after Feb. 5 so I can gloat.

[David]

The presidency is not like welding or heart surgery or any other craft.

Leadership requires good judgement, sincerity and charisma. Let the welders weld and the surgeons operate. The real question is: If you had a heart attack and two phone numbers, which one would you call: Obama or Hillary? To which one of them would you trust your life? My response would be "Edwards" - but suppose that's not an option...

I would definitely trust Obama, even knowing that Hillary has more experience. Obama has a public record, and it is longer than Hillary's. And Obama has been sincere his whole life. He didn't just talk about helping people; he actually did it. He doesn't just use people when it's convenient.

Also, Obama would send me to a better surgeon. Why? Because the experts that he chooses are chosen on merit, not on the basis of patronage. Hillary's campaign has been like a Woodstock 2 for the unemployed government employees from the 90's. Many have done favors for the Clintons, and now they want the backscratching to be reciprocated. So who knows, maybe your surgery will be done by Dr. Nick Riviera, a big Clinton contributor for decades. Feeling better?

Obama will not play like that, and he's not going to be running this country like it's his re-election campaign. He will do the right thing, because he has good judgement, and he's not afraid to use it. When "leading Democrats" like Hillary voted for war, Obama called it "stupid" because he thought everyone was underestimating the difficulty of the occupation afterwards. And that's just one example of his judgement.

Nobody has more executive experience than Dick Cheney. If experience is what you care about, maybe you should let him run the country.

[maurice]

I am SO sick of this! O'kay, once more for the record: Barack Obama DOES have MORE experience as an elected official than Hillary Clinton. I've read several blogs, and those with any rationality to them come to the same conclusion. 12 years to 8. Bottom line. And if you know anything about Chicago politics, you know that they are as rough and tumble as anything that Washington does. Also, I have question for anyone who has a question about the swiftness of Obama's rise. I've heard it speculated upon that Obama would not be in this position if he were not half black, but the question I have is would Hillary be in this position if she were not married to Bill?

[Washington]

I with you David. I asked myself that question and I chose Obama. Hillary reminds me of that lady on cat women (Halle Berry version). Her face was like stone and cold she was untrustworthy. Obama 08'

[Henry]

Which one of these canidates, Hillary, Obama, or edwards. Best represents this quote". " ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU,BUT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY?" pres. John F. kennedy..