The Wall Street Journal-20080126-Politics - Economics- To Truly Win in Carolina- Obama Needs Large Margin
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Politics & Economics: To Truly Win in Carolina, Obama Needs Large Margin
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- When is a win in the South Carolina Democratic primary really a win?
For Sen. Barack Obama, anything less than a decisive victory Saturday might lead some political operatives and observers to shrug off a first-place finish as a given.
Mr. Obama has been leading rival Sen. Hillary Clinton in polls by as much as 16 percentage points over the past week. He fares particularly well among African-American voters, who make up half of all registered Democrats in the state. By a 5 to 1 margin, they said they would vote for Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton.
This may seem like good news for Mr. Obama, who scored a first-place finish in the Iowa caucus but finished second to Mrs. Clinton in New Hampshire and Nevada. But with expectations set so high, political pundits say the Illinois senator faces a dilemma: He will have to win by a double-digit margin in order for voters nationwide to perceive South Carolina as a real victory.
This struggle to meet expectations has been heightened by the Clinton campaign. For the past week, campaign officials have been publicly lowering expectations in South Carolina while reaching out to the nearly two dozen states that will hold primaries on "Super Tuesday," Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton spent much of the week campaigning in California, Arizona, New Jersey and New York.
After days of criticizing Mrs. Clinton for ignoring the Palmetto State, the Obama campaign seemed to grasp how this expectations game was playing out. It released a memo Wednesday titled "Hillary Clinton going all out to win in South Carolina" that claims she has invested seven months of on-the-ground efforts and more than $200,000 in TV advertising in South Carolina.
The Clinton campaign says it hasn't disclosed advertising expenditures.
"There's an old South Carolina saying . . . some people would rather climb a tree to tell a fib than stand on the ground and tell the truth," says Joe Erwin, former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman and an Obama supporter. "The truth is Hillary Clinton's campaign is pulling out all the stops to win in South Carolina."
Reacting to the Obama camp's earlier criticism that she was paying scant attention to the Palmetto State, Mrs. Clinton on Monday had denied she had given up there. "My husband was there; my daughter was there; I was there," she said. "I have a couple obligations [elsewhere] to attend to today and tomorrow but . . . we're pushing very hard [in South Carolina]."
The battle here between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton has been fierce, with negative ads from both candidates flooding the airways. This week the feud between Mr. Obama and former President Clinton intensified.
On Friday, Mrs. Clinton said in an interview on NBC's "Today Show" that she'd like to call a truce. "I think both Sen. Obama and I have made it clear we do want to focus on what we each would do for our country. It has been obviously an incredibly intense campaign," she said.
Even with a decisive victory in South Carolina, Mr. Obama could face new challenges. After nearly a year of avoiding the issue of race and running a campaign based on positive change, the Illinois senator has addressed the issue more directly in both his stump speeches and in TV ads that boast he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.
Being seen through a racial lens may diminish his chances in other states, especially those with fewer black voters, says Julian Zelizer, a professor of contemporary American politics and public affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey. "Obama will need to regroup and think about his image leading into other primaries," Mr. Zelizer says.
In the past week, Mr. Obama's support among white Democrats fell in South Carolina to 10% from 20%, according to a McClatchy/MSNBC poll. Many of those voters switched their allegiance to South Carolina-born candidate John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator.
Mr. Obama addressed the question of race Thursday when he told reporters that his presidential campaign is "based on the idea that we're all in this together, and that black, white, Hispanic, Asian, all of us share common dreams, common fears, common concerns."
