Obama routs Hillary in South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Barack Obama routed Hillary Rodham Clinton in the racially charged South Carolina primary Saturday night, regaining campaign momentum in the prelude to a Feb. 5 coast-to-coast competition for more than 1,600 Democratic National Convention delegates.\n“The choice in this election is not about regions or religions or genders,” Obama said at a boisterous victory rally. “It’s not about rich versus poor, young versus old and it’s not about black versus white. It’s about the past versus the future.”\nThe audience chanted “race doesn’t matter” as it awaited Obama to make his appearance after rolling up 55 percent of the vote in a three-way race.\nBut it did, in a primary that shattered turnout records.\nAbout half the voters were black, according to polling place interviews, and four out of five of them supported Obama. Black women turned out in particularly large numbers. Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, got about a quarter of the white vote while Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina split the rest.\nClinton flew to Nashville as the polls closed, and looked ahead. “Now the eyes of the country turn to Tennessee and the other states voting on Feb. 5,” she said, adding “millions and millions of Americans are going to have their voices heard.”\nEdwards finished a distant third, a sharp setback in the state where he was born and where he scored a primary victory in his first presidential campaign four years ago. Even so, he vowed to remain in the race. His goal, he said, is to “give voice to all those whose voices aren’t being heard.”\nThe victory was Obama’s first since he won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, scored an upset in the New Hampshire primary a few days later. They split the Nevada caucuses, she winning the turnout race, he gaining a one-delegate margin. In a historic race, she hopes to become the first woman to occupy the White House, and Obama is the strongest black contender in history.\nThe South Carolina primary marked the end of the first phase of the campaign for the Democratic nomination, a series of single-state contests that winnowed the field, conferred co-front-runner status on Clinton and Obama but had relatively few delegates at stake.\nThat all changes in 10 days’ time, when New York, Illinois and California are among the 15 states holding primaries in a virtual nationwide primary. Another seven states and American Samoa will hold Democratic caucuses on the same day.\nObama took a thinly veiled swipe at Clinton in his remarks.\n“We are up against conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House,” Obama said. “But we know that real leadership is about candor, and judgment, and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose - a higher purpose.”\nLooking ahead to Feb. 5, he added that “nearly half the nation will have the chance to join us in saying that we are tired of business-as-usual in Washington, we are hungry for change and we are ready to believe again.”\nNearly complete returns showed Obama winning 55 percent of the vote, Clinton gaining 27 percent. Edwards had 18 percent and won only his home county of Oconee.\nObama also gained 25 convention delegates, Clinton won 12 and Edwards eight.\nOverall, Clinton has 249 delegates, followed by Obama with 167 and Edwards with 58.\nObama also gained an endorsement from Caroline Kennedy, who likened the Illinois senator to her late father, President John F. Kennedy.\n“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them,” she wrote on The New York Times op-ed page. “But for the first time, I believe I have found a man who could be that president - and not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”