Reality-Based Engineering: NYT Analysis of Obama's SC Victory

Sunday, January 27, 2008

NYT Analysis of Obama's SC Victory

Seems to sum it up, especially addressing the building meme out there that the Clintons took it too far with the negative attacks on Obama...some quotes:

He also has bragging rights about a new coalition of support. About as many South Carolina white men voted for Mr. Obama as for Mrs. Clinton, and about 70 percent of white voters said they would be satisfied if Mr. Obama won the Democratic nomination, according to exit polls was conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool of television networks and the Associated Press.

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Last week, Clinton advisers believed Mr. Clinton was rattling Mr. Obama and drawing his focus away from his message of moving beyond the politics of the 1990’s and the Bush presidency. The results on Saturday indicated, instead, that voters were impressed with Mr. Obama’s mettle and agreed with him that the Clintons ran an excessively negative campaign here.

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South Carolina voters showed little taste for the Clintons’ political approach. They said in exit polls that their main concern was the economy; during an all-out campaign blitz on behalf of his wife here, Mr. Clinton spent the last week highlighting Mr. Obama’s record on Iraq and his recent statements about the transformational nature of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers were minimizing the importance of South Carolina even before polls closed, saying the primaries in Florida on Tuesday and in the swath of states on Feb. 5 were more important. But she will have to reckon with the rejection of her candidacy by black voters and the mixed support she received from white Democrats and younger voters here — two groups that she must have by her side in order to build a cross-section of support in the coming contests.
“The Clintons will now have to deal with a perception of hollowness about her strategy, that she is leaving it to her husband to take care of things and allowing him to overshadow her political message,” said Blease Graham, a professor of political science at the University of South Carolina.

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Labels: 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton