Obama wins South Carolina

With 98% of precincts reporting from the South Carolina primary according to cnn.com, we have:

• Barack Obama 55%: In any normal election year, this would be a solid, possibly decisive election triumph. This year, winning 2-to-1 in South Carolina is how you lose the primary election, because the conventional wisdom is that the winning candidate has to be white, but also really really black, but not so black as to be literally black, because that would make the candidate way too white. Welcome to the 2008 Democratic Party.



• Hillary Clinton 27%: As is usual in Hillaryland, this election result was not her fault. According to the pro-Clinton media barrage of the last week, Obama is the new Sharpton: an unscrupulous race-hustler using demagoguery, outright lies, and the worst form of race-baiting to win, whatever the cost. Last year, the media buzz was that Obama was too white to become president. This week, the media buzz is that Obama is too black to become president: by making a targeted appeal to African-American voters to put himself over the top in South Carolina, Obama is supposedly inviting a nation-wide white backlash against his campaign.



• John Edwards 18%: Sure, he keeps achieving only third place in primary after primary. On the other hand, surely he must have noticed that his fortunes are linked with Obama's. That is, whenever Obama does well in a primary, Edwards tends to come close to beating Hillary to break into second place. So maybe it makes sense for Edwards to stand aside and let Obama wage World War Hillary by himself. If Obama ends up winning out over Hillary in the primary campaign, Edwards might be the major beneficiary if Hillary starts losing delegates.