South Carolina, The Kennedys and a bit on Florida

Obama won South Carolina by a complete landslide. He needed to. Anything less than a 15% margin in a state where the African-American vote was this strong would have been played in the press as a loss. But to do so by almost 30% is more than even I expected

Unfortunately, this victory will not give him quite the momentum that Clinton recieved from her victories, if only because it was always expected. However, it does show a number of things, and the desired momentum will come from the raft of high-profile Kennedy endorsements we saw today. More on those in a bit.

The Clintons have almost roundly lost the goodwill of the African-American community. 80% of the black vote went to Obama. They're playing a pretty dangerous game here though; they are acting like they don't think they need it. They do. Any Democrat, come November, is going to need it, especially if McCain is the opposition. However, I would argue that it will remain crucial in the primary contest, and the Clinton campaign has basically burned that particular bridge, something that will come back to haunt him.

As to the Kennedy endorsements, these couldn't have come at a better time for Barack Obama. The lingering fear is that an overwhelming victory in SC was going to make Obama the "black candidate". This mitigates it, and quite nicely so. I personally thought that Obama's acceptance was one of the best speeches ever given. Even better than the SC acceptance. There are so many opinion pieces on why this endorsement is good, to the extent that I won't repeat it, but to say that it is a superb build on a weekend that should have been a walk in the park, but actually added something.

The perceived wisdom used to be that the party faithful would rally around the Clinton camp. It remains, and it is assumed that the super-delegates will win this for Clinton in a brokered convention. I personally think there isn't going to be establishment adherence that was assumed five months ago. Obama's share of congressional endorsements (who also have super-delegate votes) at this early stage are supremely respectable given the fact that he is up against the Clinton name.

Note one thing else here, the rather lamentable attempt by Clinton to get Florida's delegates reinstated. I won't go into this in too much depth, but after agreeing not to participate, she is using the cynical pitch that she cares about the state. No - she cares about the delegates, who she never thought she'd need, but would come in pretty handy right about now. She seems to have won it by about 20%.

I'll say this in isolation: If the DNC reinstate the Florida delegates, then the Democrat party deserve to lose the next election. I don't think they will though.

It's mildly academic. This is now a race for delegates, which is why February 5th is the thing that we should care about. For now. February 5th will tell a lot of things. But the one thing January has proven has been that the American Presidential nominations will be fought on delegates and fought fiercely, and this is just the beginning.