Tomorrow, voters in South Carolina vote for their preferred Democrat candidate. I’ve always supported Obama just so you know my preference. SC is important because the person who wins carries that momentum and glow to Super Tuesday on 5th February, when voters in over 20 American states get to choose their candidate.

Barack Obama is almost certainly likely to win SC because half of registered Democrat voters there are African-American, and in Nevada they favoured him 80-20. Clinton has the Hispanic, ‘downscale Democrat’ and (elder) female vote. Obama has the young, richer Democrats and African-American vote.

I’m hoping that Obama wins by over 15% and Clinton comes third, to put a serious dent in her campaign. Interestingly, yesterday John Kerry came out attacking the Clintons for trying to “swiftboat” Obama. Kerry is still highly regarded among many Democrats and it looks like Clinton is doing a good job of alienating the Democrat establishment. This strategy – using others to attacking Clinton rather than do it himself – should have been conceived ages ago since Hillary is doing it brilliantly by using Bill.

It also looks to be back-firing.

A growing number of Democrats have been speaking out against Bill Clinton’s recent remarks, which Obama supporter Sen. Dick Durbin likened to swiftboating, while more reporters are scrutinizing the former President’s claims. On Tuesday, ABC News’ Jake Tapper reported that Bill Clinton has been “spreading demonstrably false information,” while Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn provided a rare conclusion for the political press: “Bill and Hillary Clinton have lied brazenly about Obama’s recent statement about Ronald Reagan.”

But I agree with Michael Tomasky that Obama needs to attack Clinton’s dismal record too. I’ll be live-blogging the SC results using some fancy new tools so stick around tomorrow evening/night.

On the Republican side, Rudy “9/11″ Giuliani should be out of the picture once he comes third in Florda – the next Republican contest. I’m hoping Mitt Romney wins just so he can puncture McCain’s campaign. Republicans in the state should also be split between older and Jewish voters choosing McCain (being helped by Joe Leiberman) and lots of evangelicals supporting Huckabee. Both are running out of money and hopefully a split vote will further de-rail their campaigns.

Yesterday I managed to attend a talk by Simon Rosenberg of New Democracy Network, which I trailed here. Rosenberg was wildly optimist about the Democrats this election and going forward, and for good reason. Not only are the two main Democrat candidates raising way more money than all of the Republican candidates combined, but turnout, support and organisation on the left is much more superior this election cycle.

Going forward, he said that demographics and changing social attitudes (that young people, the Millenials as he calls them) are much more socially liberal than their parents. Plus, minorities like Hispanics and African-Americans are overwhelmingly Democrat, and their share of the electorate is growing.

One could argue, fairly rightly, that demographics aside the Democrats haven’t really convinced the electorate that they have a convincing agenda for attracting their votes. People just hate the Republicans and the only alternative is the Democrats. That is still a dangerous situtation to be in for the Democrats, especially since an increasing number of people see themselves as ‘independent’.

Reader comments

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.