So hats off to the Obama team.  He has left this primary with two main demographic groups being his clear strengths, reaffirming some of what we already knew.  (See discussion and links to exit polls here, here and here.)  First, it is obvious that African Americans are solidly in his camp.  This can be a strength in states like Alabama and Georgia down the road.  The second group is the under 30 crowd (both white and black), the same demographic that skewed the Iowa results in his favor and helped him win even among women overall there.  This strength is more to his favor in many places than the strong African American support.  

There will be the inevitable asterisk applied to the South Carolina win.  Even though a lot of ink, both real and virtual, has been spilled over the impact of Bill Clinton's efforts in South Carolina, in the end it seems that Obama won even people who thought Obama was unfair to the Clintons. (link)  And even though most voters said the economy was their top issue (link), hardly anyone thinks Obama is that much better on the economy that either John Edwards or Hillary Clinton.

So there has to be an asterisk applied to the polling results that defy explanation of the actual vote differences.  If you are Senator Obama, you want change to be the deciding factor that explains all those other seemingly inconsistent numbers.  And it will be pretty hard for his opponents to argue that change was not an overwhelming factor in the youth vote.  But change is a very utilitarian word.  See, for example, discussion here of what voters meant in 1994 when they said they wanted change.  If change is the word for the day, opponents will be able to say, whether right or wrong, that the change most African American voters had in mind was one of their own in the White House, more than any other single change element.

Whether fair or not, race will inevitably be part of the asterisk applied to this primary blowout.  When 82% of black males and 79% of black females (link) vote for one candidate in a Democratic primary, there is no way to avoid having an asterisk based on race applied to those results.  And there will be discussion of the fact that strong black candidates have historically overperformed in South Carolina.

In fact, I think that is exactly what Bill Clinton was alluding to when he mentioned the success of Jesse Jackson in reponse to a question about why it would take both him and Hillary to beat Barack in South Carolina.  Although Josh Marshall seems determined to spin this as negatively as possible against the Clintons, there is enough truth to that explanation of Bill's statement to make it a valid explanation of why he thought Barack would be hard to beat there.

And Marshall perhaps unwittingly made the point for Bill when he was explaining the 1988 results.  In his effort to say that the primary came after the fact and the big players sort of pulled out of the race, he noted that after Gephardt pulled out of SC that Al Gore thought it left him an opening and did focus more on the state.  (link) And despite that effort by Gore, Jesse Jackson still won.  And let me be clear here: Jackson's strengths in both 1984 and 1988 was his organization within the black community.  Race alone is an insufficient explanation of either 1984 or 1988.

And the same is true of Obama's big win this year.  While race might be a big contributing factor, it was Obama's organization of the African American community that got them to the polls for him. Without that strong organization he would probably have still won, but not by so big a margin.

As a Clinton supporter, it is frustrating to me that people believe that Obama's methods of bringing change are so different from what Hillary would do.  As I have discussed here and here , there is not that much difference between what the Clintons get slammed for among liberals, incremental change that involved cooperating with Republicans, and what Obama would do in practice.  That he has been able to win the liberal vote so handily is a sign that they picture him as more liberal than Hillary.  

And in case you are wondering why I bring this up, it is my way of saying that although I must be immune to the appeal that draws in all those liberal voters, there is no denying that Obama performs better with that group.  What he looks like on paper doesn't seem to matter, so I am guessing that his great speeches are a deciding factor in that appeal.  Hats off to him for pulling that off.