Clintons eager to bolt S.C. before the blowout

[Steve Gardner]

As the article suggests, Obama did go on to record a comprehensive victory - 55% to Clinton's 27%, with Edwards third on 18%.

But it's Bill Clinton's comments and the articles interpretation that interested me. He said:

"they [the Obama campaign] are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender. That's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here"

Which was interpreted by Sun-Times as meaning:

"black voters would not vote for a white candidate"

When it strikes me that what Clinton was really saying - or maybe hoping - is that white voters won't vote for black candidates.

Source: Sun-Times

January 27, 2008
BY JENNIFER HUNTER

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- You know the game is up when one of the major players walks off the field long before the contest is over.

Before the polls in the South Carolina primary even closed, Hillary Clinton packed her bags and headed for Nashville, Tenn.

Her husband, former President Bill Clinton -- who campaigned assiduously for her in the Palmetto State -- also left. He went to Independence, Mo.

They knew there would be nothing to celebrate. This wouldn't be a squeaker like New Hampshire or Nevada. The outcome was clear just after 6 p.m., Chicago time, when most of the news networks declared Obama the winner.

Moments later, Obama's media strategist, David Axelrod, was being swarmed by reporters in the city's convention center, Obama's primary night headquarters. Axelrod could barely be heard behind the shouts of the pumped-up crowd: "Yes, we can!"

He said the campaign accepted the results with humility, recognizing there is still a struggle to come on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.

But he did acknowledge, with a glint of a smile: "This was good old-fashioned butt kicking, in the parlance of the business."

Obama won most of the support of African Americans, who went to the polls in record numbers. The total number of people voting was about 500,000, compared with 300,000 in the last Democratic primary four years ago.

Seventy-eight percent of the African Americans cast their votes for Obama, vs. 19 percent for Clinton and about 2 percent for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who was born in this state.

Whites cast 24 percent of their votes for Obama, 40 percent for Edwards and 36 percent for Clinton.

Emphasis was placed on the question of race in this election, with Bill Clinton suggesting at one point that "they [the Obama campaign] are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender. That's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here." The implication was black voters would not vote for a white candidate.

But consider that the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a son of South Carolina, won only 7 percent of the white vote when he ran for the Democratic nomination in 1988. Times have changed.

And the palpable excitement in Obama headquarters on Gervais Street during the afternoon of the primary showed Obama has supporters of all ages and colors. The place was filled with young men in baseball caps, disabled people in wheelchairs and dozens of people coming in and asking, "What can I do to help?"

The truth is a large proportion of the Democratic vote in this state is black, so wooing African Americans is essential.

Inez Tenenbaum, former state school superintendent and an early backer of Obama, said that after Iowa and New Hampshire, 500 Obama volunteers descended on Columbia to help the campaign. They had to be housed at the YMCA, snuggling up in sleeping bags on the floor.

"I've seen the peanut brigades of Jimmy Carter," said Tenenbaum. "I've seen the support for Bill Clinton, but the level of commitment to this man [Obama] is really extraordinary."

Yes, in South Carolina, he can.