Well done Hilary Clinton on her win in New Hampshire. I've made no secret that I am carried away with Obama fever. But it is good see Clinton clawing her way back with some good old-fashioned campaigning and support from honest-to-goodness blue collar types and women.
Of course, as that wise owl Duncan Borrowman points out, everything before Super Duper Tuesday is "noise", but it will be interesting to see how things go in South Carolina, where Obama has built up a strong campaign.
The Age reports some interesting dynamics in there:
"White, college-age kids in South Carolina are flocking to work for Senator Obama, and this was happening before he became popular," local historian Walter Edgar said, acknowledging the lingering racial divide in this former slave state where blacks account for about half of Democratic primary voters.
"These kids' parents are all Southerners.
"They are card-carrying Republicans."
South Carolina, one of the more impoverished states in the union, has just over 4 million people, nearly 30 per cent of whom are African American.
The state's black establishment had been firmly for Senator Clinton, but Senator Obama's win in overwhelmingly white Iowa changed the calculus for many.
"There had been this thinking that Obama was not electable," Clemson University's Bruce Ransom, an authority on South Carolina's black electorate, said.
When Senator Obama gave his Iowa victory speech surrounded by white supporters, "for black South Carolinans that was a powerful image".
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