Barack Obama won the 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.
“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.” The 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.
The 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.
That 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.
Looking ahead to Feb. 5, Obama 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.” Obama also gained an endorsement from Caroline Kennedy, who likened the Illinois senator to her late father, President John F. Kennedy.
“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.” – SOURCE: AP
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