politburo diktat 2.0

Let’s put it out there, comrades. The Clintons wanted to make this a black-white campaign, and their success might even be admired.¹

As far as the South Carolina primary goes, Dick Morris summed it up:

Hillary Clinton will undoubtedly lose the South Carolina primary as African-Americans line up to vote for Barack Obama. And that defeat will power her drive to the nomination.

The Clintons are encouraging the national media to disregard the whites who vote in South Carolina’s Democratic primary and focus on the black turnout, which is expected to be quite large. They have transformed South Carolina into Washington, D.C. — an all-black primary that tells us how the African-American vote is going to go.

Presumably the media will accept this narrative, and play down an expected Obama win² here. That doesn’t make the media racist, just realistic.

Now, we have the late surge by John Edwards, possibly in response to the last debate where he took the high road when Obama and Hillary tangled. There is a possibility that Edwards could come in second, with Hillary third.

But dig a little deeper in this poll, this one, and this one. Edwards is out-performing, or very close to, Hillary among white voters!

So, even if she still comes in second overall, but loses the white vote to Edwards, how does that get spun?

1. Ash in Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi classic ALIEN “I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.” [↩]
2. Once again, as in the days before New Hampshire, I am assuming the polls will be roughly accurate. Yikes! [↩]