South Carolina

Last night the South Carolina Democrats threw their weight behind Barack Obama in a massive display of support. He won 55% of the vote to Clinton's 27% and Edwards 19%.
How did did he win a State in which the Clintons seemed quite strong a couple weeks back?
John Edwards, who was born in S.C. and who won the State in 2004 was also defeated.

Apparently Obama's message and the viability of his candidacy won over the first Democratic consituency of South Carolina : the Black voters, 80% of them cast their ballots for him. They had not been certain that Obama was worth rooting for before the race began, but after his victory in Iowa and his strong standing in the face of attacks from the Clinton camp during last week's debate ( watch the video of the debate), he emerged as a strong figure capable of winning the nomination, maybe the election and bringing much yearned for change to American politics.
Remember that the issue of race was at the center of the campaign for the last couple weeks, it's very interesting to see how it plays out now that Barack Obama has won the support of a huge majority of Blacks and only 25% of whites in a State.
Obama is clearly running as a post racial candidate, what I mean is that he is the first African-American not to run as "the Black candidate", putting forth an agenda based on racial issues. Very interestingly, the S.C. crowd listening to the speech chanted : "race don't matter". Is that really the case?
Can the Senator from Illinois continue to appeal to white voters after being so overwhelmingly endorsed by African-American voters?
He has been careful to present himself as the candidate for change, regardless of race. Will this victory force him to define himself and his candidacy, more than he previously has, in terms of race?
There certainly is a lot to look forward to.
When Bill Clinton commented on Obama's victory in S.C., he compared his feat to the victory won by Jesse Jackson there in the 1980s. He was an African-American and a civil rights activist clearly running as the Black candidate for the Democratic nomination. Clinton wants to define Obama as such a candidate, appealing to a narrow racial base and thus tries to discredit his posture as a "post-racial" American. Read more.

I have been comparing the speeches by Hillary Clinton (watch her N.H. victory speech) and Barack Obama and I find it quite interesting to see what each of them mean when they use the word "we". Basically when Hillary says "we" she means "me" or "me and my administration" (or maybe even "me and Bill"!) and what makes this clear is that she uses "you" as opposed to "we". When she says "you" she is usually referring to her supporters, the ordinary Americans etc...
When Barack Obama says "we" he means "me and you" or "me and my supporters". And he pits "we" against "them", that is the cynics, the washington politicians, the pundits all his "opponents" ( refer to my previous post on his speech to see how he uses the opposition to his own advantage).
This is the first part of Obama's S.C. victory speech :

Here is the second part of the speech :



His rhetoric, the rythm of his speech and the lexicon he resorts to are clear indicators of his sources of inspiration and the tradition to which he is the self-proclaimed heir : the peaceful and aspirational branch of the civil rights movement, best represented by Dr. Martin Luther King (as pointed out by A.on the comment page). For instance he declares that he did not see a black S.C. and a white S.C. but that he saw S.C., this rings a bit like the achievement of the dream of unity of MLK who called for a country where "little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers." Barack Obama also reminds his audience of his work alongside white Americans and Latinos as an activist and a politician.
Listen, watch or read the I have a dream speech.
Most symptomatic is the last minutes of his speech (starting 7:30') when he says "we take this journey across this great country, a country we love, with the message we've carried from the plains of Iowa to the hills of New Hampshire, from the Nevada desert to the South Carolina coast" which clearly rang like the end of the "I have a dream speech" :

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
(...) But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi

And finally I find that the way the crowd reacts to his words is also clearly remindful of MLK's speeches and Southern Black preachers.

What's next?
There is a big contest coming up on Tuesday: guess why it is so important for the GOP and not so much so for the Democrats?

New York Times article on the S.C. primary.