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Time magazineBy KAREN TUMULTY Sat Jan 26, 9:50 AM ET
There was only way to describe Barack Obama's victory over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in South Carolina: It was a rout. "After four great contests in every corner of this country, we have the most votes, the most delegates, and the most diverse coalition of Americans that we've seen in a long, long time," Obama declared at his victory celebration in Columbia. "There are young and old; rich and poor. They are black and white; Latino and Asian and Native American. They are Democrats from Des Moines and Independents from Concord, and yes, some Republicans from rural Nevada and we've got young people from all across this country who've never had a reason to participate until now."
Obama's impressive win meant all the more given the nature of politics in South Carolina, a state whose history is fraught with race and class. Some observers wondered if the state's voters were becoming more racially polarized in the final days before the primary. That speculation was fueled by one late McClatchy/MSNBC survey that suggested Obama could expect to receive no more than 10% of the white vote, half of what the same poll had shown only a week before. But Obama instead won about a quarter of the white vote overall, and around half of young white voters, on his way to a commanding 55% of the total vote (Clinton finished second with roughly 27% and Edwards came in third with 18%). The excitement around Obama's candidacy pushed turnout to record levels - a kind of surge, says Obama strategist Cornell Belcher, that "is something only Barack Obama is capable of bringing to the table."
It is a powerful message for the Illinois Senator to take into the Super Tuesday round of primaries on February 5. "In nine days-nine short 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 declared. His South Carolina victory will be topped by an endorsement by Caroline Kennedy, in a Sunday New York Times op-ed headlined: "A President Like My Father." The move will serve as a powerful, symbolic counter to the most visible surrogate in this race, Bill Clinton - the boy whose own political awakening famously came when he shook JFK's hand as a 16-year-old as part of an American Legion Boy's Nation visit to the nation's capital. . . .
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/obamasroutrejiggerstherace
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