The Take-Away From South Carolina

[babylonsister]

The Take-Away From South Carolina

What you need to know about tonight's results:

1.) Obama took nearly 80 percent of the black vote, yes, but also about a quarter of the white vote. That stacks up pretty well alongside Hillary's 36 percent and Edwards's 40***--well enough that Nora O'Donnell of MSNBC could call it "almost a three-way split," and The New York Times could proclaim that a "coalition of white and black support" powered Obama's victory. This is a huge development going forward. The one thing Obama couldn't afford coming out of South Carolina was to be pigeonholed as "the black candidate." Instead, the opposite is happening--he's being hailed as someone who can appeal to all demographics.

What's more, that 24-percent share among whites comes after four South Carolina polls (the last four that made cross-tabs publicly available) showing him with only 17 percent of the white vote on average. So Obama over-performed among white voters, suggesting a possible backlash against the Clintons' tactics.

2.) Once you get below the top-line statistics, the results look even better for Obama: He appears to have tied Hillary among white men (though I'm still waiting for official confirmation of that), and trounced her 52-27 among non-black voters under 30 (though they only accounted for 5 percent of the total vote.)

3.) In recent weeks, many of us in the chattering class have argued that Obama's best hope of winning was to frame the race as a choice between the future and everything you didn't like about the '90s. Obama has gradually made this case over the past week. Tonight, he went a long way toward hammering it home. I thought these passages in his victory speech were especially effective:

We are up against the conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as President comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House. But we know that real leadership is about candor, and judgment, and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose – a higher purpose. ...

We are up against the idea that it’s acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election. We know that this is exactly what’s wrong with our politics; this is why people don’t believe what their leaders say anymore; this is why they tune out. And this election is our chance to give the American people a reason to believe again. ...

The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It’s not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white.

It’s about the past versus the future.

4.) Related to the previous point: I think the Clintons played into this narrative today--with Bill Clinton's outrageous, unprompted comparison of Obama's victory to Jesse Jackson's South Carolina victories in 1984 and '88. (One huge difference: Jackson never broke out of single digits among whites.) I think the media is going to give them a hard time for this--and deservedly so.**

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http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/01/26/the-take-away-from-south-carolina.aspx