Obama Wins Big

It’s important not to discount Obama’s victory–winning always beats losing. But one of two things may have happened as a result of Bill Clinton injecting himself into the campaign. The biggest news this week was the former president’s mild suggestion that race and gender could play into the primary here. It turned out he was half right. Hillary Clinton lost women for the first time since Iowa. But Obama carried the black vote by nearly the same giant margin he did in Nevada–80 percent to 18 percent. He got only 25 percent of the white vote, which was split evenly between Clinton and John Edwards.

So here’s the question: Going forward will it turn out that President Clinton maneuvered the Obama campaign into becoming, quite unwittingly, a campaign about racial solidarity? Earlier today Bill Clinton dismissed South Carolina by observing that Jesse Jackson won the state in both 1984 and 1988.

Or did Clinton’s foray into his wife’s campaign help remind Democrats why they were glad to be rid of the pair at the end of the ’90s?

Here’s what the exit polling shows:

* Clinton got walloped among women, losing 53 percent to 30 percent. She lost black women 79 percent to 19 percent, nearly the same percentage that she lost black men (82 percent to 15 percent).

* Obama was strong across all age groups; Clinton won only voters over 65.

* 58 percent of voters reported that Bill Clinton’s campaigning was important. Obama carried this group by 11 points. But here’s the important thing: Obama’s margin was bigger among voters who thought Bill Clinton wasn’t important. Obama was +49 among that group. Hillary Clinton actually won voters who said Bill Clinton was “very important” by 3 points.

But how seriously should these numbers be taken? While 58 percent said that Bill Clinton’s campaigning since Wednesday was important, only 21 percent of voters said they made up their minds during the last 3 days.

* Two other abstract, but interesting results from questions on whether or not America is ready to elect a black or a woman president. About the same percentage–22 percent–said “no” to each. As you would expect, Clinton won voters who thought America isn’t ready for a black president and Obama won voters who thought America wasn’t ready for a woman. But their margins were very different: Clinton was only +25 among voters who thought we’re not ready for a black president. Obama was +61 among voters who thought America wasn’t ready for a woman.

This further suggests that Obama received more identity-group solidarity than Clinton did, even among voters who think he may not be electable.

The Obama camp is desperate not to let this view of the campaign take hold. The huge crowd his victory rally cheered wildly when one of the networks broadcast on the loudspeaker that Obama got 25 percent of the white vote. They began chanting “Race doesn’t matter! Race doesn’t matter!” A few second later, the campaign killed the TV feed and began pumping in gospel music. It’s the first time I’ve heard them do that–normally they play a steady diet of hipster pop, heavy on the U-2 and KT Tunstall.

* For John Edwards, the news gets grimmer every day. After getting 4 percent of the vote in Nevada, where he campaigned heavily, he finished a distant third here. But that’s not even the bad part. What’s grim is that in South Carolina–which should have been a “home” state for Edwards–his support tumbled over 50 percent from his 2004 showing, where he won with 45 percent of the vote.

All of this–save the Edwards meltdown–may turn out to be academic. Obama won a large victory. It was the best electoral outcome he could have hoped for. And Clinton lost a state she expected to lose. Whether or not any larger thematic shifts happened beneath all of this, the campaign goes on.

Update: How worried is the Obama camp about being pegged as an identity-politics campaign? When the triumphant Obama took the stage, the crowd of 2,000-plus was euphoric (he entered to U-2’s “Beautiful Day”). He opened by saying, “We have the most votes, the most delegates, and the most diverse coalition of Americans that we’ve seen in a long time.” The crowd chanted, again, “Race doesn’t matter! Race doesn’t matter!”

But for something that doesn’t matter, Obama dwelled an awful lot on the subject: “We’re up against the idea that it’s acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election. . . . We’re also up against forces that are not the fault of any one campaign. . . . A politics that tells us that we have to think, act, and even vote, within the categories that define us. . . . The assumption that African-Americans cannot support the white candidate . . . we are here tonight to say that that is not the America that we believe in.”

“I did not travel around this state . . . to see a white South Carolina, and a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina,” he said.

He went on: “It is not about black versus white . . . it’s about the past versus the future.” That may well be true of the race going forward. It’s difficult to fault Obama for the results in South Carolina. He has not run a campaign based on identity politics. And besides, what was he supposed to do–lose South Carolina to prove how non-racial his appeal is?

But what is troubling about tonight is that Obama was unwilling to tell people an obvious truth: that while white voters have supported him in great numbers (elsewhere, if not in South Carolina), black voters have so far been unwilling to support his white opponents. Again, that’s not his fault; and it may not even mean anything significant.

But it surely means something that Obama was so bent on denying this fact that he turned his victory speech into an attempt to convince voters of something obviously untrue. One of Obama’s frequent promises in his stump speech is that he is willing to tell voters hard truths, even if they don’t want to hear it. That wasn’t the case tonight.

Jonathan V. Last is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.