Thread: Is Hilary being edged out?

Obama wins in South Carolina by a massive margin. Hopefully this'll be the beginning of the end for Clinton. She seemsto be ahead in the remaining states though. It'd be great to see her out I must admit.

Will it all be decided by Feb 5th or do we have to wait for more after that?

You know along with everyone else, politicians are nothing but total liars

The Hillary camp was expecting the South Carolina loss. A loss for Obama would have likely sunk his ship. Feb. 5 it is, and who knows. The way things are looking it may go beyond that.

I wasn't hot on Obama winning the prize but I find my thinking gradually changing as the possiblility looms larger.

How Obama fares in the states that aren't predominantly black is a more interesting question, imo.

<H2>Obama risks votes by proving he's black enough

JOHN IBBITSON
Globe and Mail Update
January 25, 2008 at 11:17 PM EST

DILLON, S.C. — When Rachel Whitfield was a teenager, 60 years ago, she saw a classmate walking on the road, rather than on the grass beside the road where she was supposed to walk, because she was black.
“People told her to get off the road, but she wouldn't, so they called a slapper,” she remembers. A policeman arrived, and slapped the young girl around, to remind her of her place.
Almost two-thirds of a century later, Ms. Whitfield, 76, believes “there's been a lot of changes. But the prejudice and whatnot, it lingers on.”
Prejudice lingers on, and poverty and resentment in this small town in one of the poorest parts of America. And that is why, for so many black Americans, Barack Obama is not simply a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, but the incarnation of a prophesy.

Enlarge Image Barack Obama waves to supporters from the stage during an outdoor rally at Clemson University in South Carolina on Friday. (Jason Reed/Reuters)

“How can I say it?” Levone Graves, 61, searches for the words. “It's a joy. It's a great hope. It's Martin's dream come alive.”
Martin Luther King's dream lives. But the dream is unlikely to be fulfilled, simply because Mr. Obama cannot square the circle of appealing to race and transcending it.
Mr. Obama is expected to win the South Carolina Democratic primary today. Up to half of the voters are expected to be black, and black voters are believed to favour Mr. Obama over New York Senator Hillary Clinton two or more to one.
But white voters appear to favour Ms. Clinton, and Latino voters and women voters, too. That is why Ms. Clinton won the New Hampshire and Nevada contests. It is why she still holds a lead, albeit steadily diminishing, in the national polls. And it is why she must still be favoured to win the greater number of delegates when 22 states hold Democratic primaries and caucuses on Feb. 5.
Yet Dillon can still hope, even though hope is such a scarce resource.
“I believe that he will bring about change,” she says, “a change for the world,” and “a big change for Dillon.”
She has no time for those who say not yet, he's not ready, America's not ready.
“Why not?” she retorts. “When are we going to be ready, if we're not ready now? What's the difference between you and me, except our colour? We live, and one day we're going to die. And we're going to be judged.”
And yet the harsh irony of politics is that the more hope Barack Obama gives to people like Joan Jones, the more he damages his chances of winning the nomination.
At the very heart of Mr. Obama's appeal, especially for liberal, affluent white voters, is that he does not come out of the angry black South, as Rev. Jesse Jackson did. (A South Carolina native, he won the state in both his 1984 and 1988 bids for the Democratic presidential nomination.) Mr. Obama was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii; his mother was white and his father Kenyan.
Until a month or so ago, a majority of black voters supported Ms. Clinton, whose husband remains very popular among blacks. Mr. Obama has had to work hard to convince them that he is their candidate, that he is one of them, as his address in Dillon subtly stressed.
Talking of the Washingtonian doublespeak he accuses both the Republican administration and Ms. Clinton of practising, he protested: “That ain't right.”
Then he chuckled. “There are some things that are not right. And then there are some things that just ain't right. And that ain't right.”
This from the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.
And yet even as Mr. Obama asserts in South Carolina that he is, indeed, black enough, he risks alienating the other parts of the broad coalition he must forge to win the nomination.
A McClatchy news service poll released Thursday revealed that Mr. Obama's support among white voters in South Carolina had fallen to 10 per cent from 20 per cent. But the poll also showed that he enjoyed the support of 66 per cent of black men and 55 per cent of black women.
That support, to the extent it is mirrored nationwide, could be fatal for Mr. Obama's campaign, especially if it also reinforces the growing preferences of Latino voters for Ms. Clinton over Mr. Obama.
That is tragic. The great appeal of Mr. Obama's campaign is that it seeks to surmount race and partisanship. Yet it is being compromised by the very race-identity politics it hopes to overcome.
Both Hillary Clinton and former North Carolina senator John Edwards, who hails from South Carolina, have made their obligatory pitches along the corridor of shame. But it is only Mr. Obama who has bound himself and his fate to these people. If he fails, Dillon will disappear again from the political conscience of America, and its people will be left to their fate.
It is why so many here embrace Mr. Obama as though their life depended on it, which it may.
“For once, a man comes along who wants to emphasize change, which is what the country needs, which is the voice of the people,” proclaims Chuck Smith, 44 and black, who owns several businesses on Main Street.
“He's not just going to work on behalf of us. He's bringing in the people who fear us and who we sometimes fear.
“It is time to get away from the politics of fear,” Mr. Smith urges, passionately. And Mr. Obama, he believes, could take the fear away.
“He is the very ideal of change.”
But change does not come easy, in the Pee Dee or anywhere else.

</H2>
Quite a long article from the Globe and Mail.

But some excellent points raised.

I think the most significant item raised is that the polls show decisively how the white votes will move away from the Obama message as the black vote coalesces around it.

A death blow for Obama perhaps.

Still though, many twists and turns before Nov. 4

Edwards comes in third in his home state, I would wager on him pulling out soon.

...and become a vice-presidential possibility...