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S.C. win gives Obama boost heading toward Super Tuesday

BY GLENN THRUSH | glenn.thrush@newsday.com

11:05 PM EST, January 26, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama and his wife Michelle celebrate victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary Saturday night. (Getty Photo / January 26, 2008)

COLUMBIA, S.C. - The black-and-white fight in South Carolina is now a black-and-blue battle for the big prize on Feb. 5th.

Barack Obama scored a major victory in the Palmetto State primary Saturday, giving him a burst of momentum he'll need to overcome Hillary Rodham Clinton's advantage in a Super Tuesday showdown in 22 states including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and California.

Riding a wave of African-American support in a racially divided contest, Obama trounced Clinton, 55 percent to 27 percent, with 96 percent of precincts reporting. South Carolina native John Edwards finished third with 18 percent.

Obama's 28-point margin of victory was by far the greatest enjoyed by any Democratic candidate this year and provided him with a much-needed boost after defeats in New Hampshire and Nevada.

Obama, whose aides accuse Clinton of defining him as a "black" candidate with limited national appeal, came out swinging during a speech in the state's capital after the polls closed.

"We are up against the idea that it's acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election," he told a crowd of chanting supporters. "We know that this is exactly what's wrong with our politics."

Addressing the racial issues that marred the campaigning here, he added, "I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina -- I saw South Carolina."

Earlier, Bill Clinton seemed to exacerbate those tensions by likening Obama's decisive victory to Jesse Jackson's ill-funded and ill-fated campaigns in the 1980s.

"Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988," Clinton said during a campaign stop Saturday. "Jesse Jackson ran a good campaign here. Obama's run a good campaign here."

On Tuesday, the Democrats move to the political netherworld of Florida, a state that was stripped of its delegates by the Democratic National Committee because it scheduled the primary before Super Tuesday. All three candidates have pledged not to campaign in the Sunshine State, but Clinton enjoys a double-digit lead there and vowed to fight to seat the delegates during this summer's Democratic convention in Denver.

Charles Cook, an independent political analyst in Washington, said Obama's win gives him a "shot in the arm." But he still gives Clinton an edge going into a 22-state super primary with Clinton leading in all big states except Obama's home state on Illinois.

"This is what Obama needed to stay alive and stay competitive," he said, "but Super Tuesday is the one that's more likely to be decisive ... I still think that she has an advantage. There aren't many states where 50 percent of the Democratic primary is African-Americans."

Obama hopes the momentum generated by the scale of his victory will erode some Clinton's leads in several critical Feb. 5 states, especially in California, where he has whittled her lead from the 20 point-range to about 12 points.

"In nine days, nearly half the nation will have the chance to join us in saying that we are tired of business-as-usual in Washington, we are hungry for change, and we are ready to believe again," Obama told supporters last night.

As proof of his broad appeal, Obama's campaign announced he'd been endorsed by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg Saturday.

Still, some Clinton backers believe she won by losing here, saying Obama was forced to abandon his multiracial, multiethic call for change that catapulted him to victory in Iowa in favor of a conventional campaign targeting a racial voting bloc.

As expected, the South Carolina balloting splintered along racial lines, with 78 percent of Obama's support from black voters and 20 percent from whites, a CNN exit poll found.

For days, Clinton's aides have tried to spin Obama's impending victory as a nonevent, arguing that he enjoyed an insurmountable edge among blacks, who made up half of the Democratic electorate here. Nonetheless, Clinton led in polls here for much of last year.

About a third of Clinton's voters yesterday were black.

She was on her campaign plane headed for Tennessee when the results were announced, irking some black voters who got wind of her plans before the polls closed at 7 p.m.

Perhaps fittingly, Surrogate-in-Chief Bill Clinton was the first member of his family to publicly congratulate Obama after a week of sparring him.

"He won fair and square," the former president said of Obama. "Now we go to Feb. 5 and millions of Americans finally get in the act."

Washington bureau chief Craig Gordon contributed to this story.