Barack Obama’s landslide in South Carolina is being called a repudiation of what has been perceived, rightly or wrongly, as race baiting on the part of the Clinton campaign. Apparently there has been a lot of movement toward Obama in the last three days.

One of the bobbleheads on television — don’t remember which one — said the Clintons are still running a campaign as if it were the 1990s. This may be why younger and better educated voters in particular are being turned off to the Clintons. It will be interesting to see what adjustments they make.

More on the Clintons from today’s newspapers — Bob Herbert writes,

Bill Clinton, in his over-the-top advocacy of his wife’s candidacy, has at times sounded like a man who’s gone off his medication. And some of the Clinton surrogates have been flat-out reprehensible.

Andrew Young, for instance.

This week, while making the remarkable accusation that the Obama camp was responsible for raising the race issue, Mr. Clinton mentioned Andrew Young as someone who would bear that out. It was an extremely unfortunate reference.

Here’s what Mr. Young, who is black and a former ambassador to the United Nations, had to say last month in an interview posted online: “Bill is every bit as black as Barack. He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack.”

He then went on to make disgusting comments about the way that Bill and Hillary Clinton defended themselves years ago against the fallout from the former president’s womanizing. That’s coming from the Clinton camp!

And then there was Bob Kerrey, the former senator and another Clinton supporter, who slimed up the campaign with the following comments:

“It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”

Pressing the point, Mr. Kerrey told CNN’s John King: “I’ve watched the blogs try to say that you can’t trust him because he spent a little bit of time in a secular madrassa. I feel quite the opposite.”

Get it?

Let’s start with the fact that Mr. Obama never attended a madrassa, and that there is no such thing as a secular madrassa. A madrassa is a religious school. Beyond that, the idea is to not-so-slyly feed the current frenzy, on the Internet and elsewhere, that Senator Obama is a Muslim, and thus potentially (in the eyes of many voters) an enemy of the United States.

Mr. Obama is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. And if he were a Muslim, it would not be a legitimate reason for attacking his candidacy.

The Clinton camp knows what it’s doing, and its slimy maneuvers have been working. Bob Kerrey apologized and Andrew Young said at the time of his comment that he was just fooling around. But the damage to Senator Obama has been real, and so have the benefits to Senator Clinton of these and other lowlife tactics.

Jonathan Chait:

Something strange happened the other day. All these different people — friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read — kept saying the same thing: They’ve suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we’ve reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons. …

…The big turning point seems to be this week, when the Clintons slammed Obama for acknowledging that Ronald Reagan changed the country. Everyone knows Reagan changed the country. Bill and Hillary have said he changed the country. But they falsely claimed that Obama praised Reagan’s ideas, saying he was a better president than Clinton — something he didn’t say and surely does not believe.

This might have been the most egregious case, but it wasn’t the first. Before the New Hampshire primaries, Clinton supporters e-mailed pro-choice voters claiming that Obama was suspect on abortion rights because he had voted “present” instead of “no” on some votes. (In fact, the president of the Illinois chapter of Planned Parenthood said she had coordinated strategy with Obama and wanted him to vote “present.”)

At the Boston Herald, Michael Graham quotes Dick Morris:

“If Hillary loses South Carolina and the defeat serves to demonstrate Obama’s ability to attract a block vote among black Democrats, the message will go out loud and clear to white voters that this is a racial fight. That will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton.”

No matter what happens in South Carolina today – even if Obama wins a plurality among white voters – the Clintons and their media stooges have turned South Carolina into “the black primary.”

To me, this isn’t about whether Clinton or Obama or Edwards would make the best nominee. It’s about the process of Democracy. This style of scorched earth, divide and conquer politics might win elections but it leaves a nasty residue of resentment and distrust that harms all of us.

Update: What Josh Marshall says.

You probably already know that yesterday’s primary in Michigan was meaningless for Democrats. The Dem Party stripped Michigan of its delegates for holding its primary too early. One result of the primary has raised eyebrows, however. As Josh Marshall writes,

According to the Fox exit polls, in the Democratic primary tonight, Clinton took 25% of the African-American vote and “uncommitted” is getting 69% of the African-American vote. Now remember, Hillary is only major candidate on the ballot. The others, and even Hillary to a degree, boycotted the primary because Michigan got crosswise with the national Democratic party over the date of their primary. Rep. Conyers (D) is an Obama supporter and he pushed for the state’s African-American community to vote “uncommitted.” There’s too much screwy about the Democratic primary in Michigan tonight to draw too much from this; but it is suggestive.

These numbers may have something to do with the suddenly kinder and gentler Clinton campaign. Jeff Zeleny and Patrick Healy write for the New York Times about last night’s Dem debate in Las Vegas:

It was a night of “John” and “Barack” and “Hillary,” soft voices, easy jokes and belly laughs. Even the normally pugnacious Tim Russert, one of the moderators, seemed subdued.

“We’re all family in the Democratic party,” Mrs. Clinton said, glancing toward her competitors who were seated closely around a table. “We are so different from the Republicans on all of these issues.”

The Clintons had tried to take down Obama with some back-alley dirty campaigning. Surrogates for the Clintons kept stepping over the line to make racially tinged charges. Early this week the Obama campaign fought back by releasing a memo detailing alleged racial slurs. And then the Clinton’s noticed their once-secure lead among African Americans had gone with the wind. Oops.

Some have argued that the Obama campaign took some Clinton quotes out of context to give them a racial spin the Clintons didn’t intend. But there was plenty that wasn’t taken out of context. Michael Tomasky writes,

I tend to agree with the school of thought that believes that race-related controversy may help Obama in the short term by galvanizing the black vote for him in South Carolina, but will more likely hurt him in the larger picture because having to talk about race makes him look less “post-racial”, which is the presumed (emphasis on presumed, because this is just white pundits presuming, and no one really knows) heart of his appeal to independents.

This is why the attacks from Clinton surrogates don’t look completely like a coincidence to a lot of people. This is especially true of the ones about Obama’s admitted past drug use, which fuel certain racial stereotypes in a way that “progressive” campaigns ought to avoid. Many people I’ve spoken with fully expected Obama’s drug use to come up – in a general election, against the Republicans, if he made it that far. Most observers did not expect it to surface among Democrats. The fact that it has – and the fact that three Clinton surrogates have now bruited the subject – has infuriated a lot of people.

Maybe the Clintons figured they could afford to lose some black votes if they could stir up enough latent racism among white voters to keep them away from Obama.

… I think it may be assigning too much conspiratorial control to the Clintons to assume that every word spoken by every person is orchestrated from some central command. That doesn’t usually happen in campaigns – which are usually sloppy and disorganised things – either.

But what does happen is that the candidate establishes a tone (and in this case, the candidate and her husband, who happens to be unusually important). Surrogates pick up on that tone, and they decide what’s fair game and what isn’t with a nudge and a wink from central command. And the tone the Clintons have established these last two weeks is one of complete condescension toward and disrespect for Obama, and that, not Hillary’s artless comment about Dr Martin Luther King, is what’s really the problem here.

As I said earlier this week, I think the Obama campaign put the Clintons on notice that they could play the same game. And maybe the Clintons looked at the poll numbers and got the message. So now they’re all being nicey-nice, which works for Obama, who has been trying to run an I’m-above-all-this-dirt sort of campaign.

In “The race vs. gender war,” Gary Kamiya argues that racism remains a more radioactive element in politics than sexism, which in a way gives Obama an odd sort of advantage.

The fact that Obama is being treated with kid gloves shows not that racism is less potent than sexism, but that racism remains a much more radioactive force in American society. Politeness is a sign of ignorance, distance and fear. The mostly white commentariat feels freer to attack Clinton, a white woman, than it does Obama in part because he doesn’t have as long a track record, but mostly because most white people dread being perceived as racist. It’s good that white people don’t want to be seen as racist, but their wariness about criticizing him shows that America still has a long way to go.

On the other hand,

Obama himself has avoided tangling with the media by running on an inspirational message of hope and unity. But that message, as his critics point out, can veer into the ethereal. Obama is caught in a dilemma similar to that Clinton faces, but he has even less room to maneuver. If he gets tough, he risks being seen as “too black,” a perception that would doom his bid; if he floats above the fray, he invites criticism as being a fairy tale, all style and no substance.

If he wins the nomination, Senator Obama might want to add a little more gravitas to the mix.

Some analyses of yesterday’s vote in New Hampshire. John Judis, The New Republic:

Clinton is still doing well among women (particularly older and married women), traditional Democrats, voters over 40, and among lower-middle income white voters without college degrees who are worried about the economy. Obama is doing fabulously among the young and very well among independents and upscale Independents. Both of these can also be important blocs for a Democrat to win in the fall.

Here are the groups in which Obama enjoyed a significant margin over Clinton: men, young voters (18-24), voters making more than $50,000, voters with post-graduate education (a good indication of professionals), independents, first time voters, voters without religious affiliation, men without children and single men, voters who said they were getting ahead financially, voters who thought the war in Iraq was the most important issue, who wanted change, and who wanted someone who could unite the country.

Here are Clinton’s groups: women, particularly married women, voters over 40, voters making less than $50,000, voters without a college degree, union voters, Democrats, Catholics (an important constituency for the Democrats), people very worried about the economy, voters who thought the economy was most important, voters who valued experience, and voters who evaluated candidates on whether they “care about people like me.”

I think this suggests Obama would be the far stronger candidate in a general election.

Via Skippy — Jeff Fecke at Shakesville speculates that the swing to Hillary among older women — which is what got her the last minute majority — was a backlash to MSM misogyny. He might be right.

Update: Shamanic is more cheerful than I am.

Update 2: The BooMan crunches numbers.

Update 3: One reason to be happy Clinton won New Hampshire.

I was out this evening and just got back. Clinton ahead? Even if Obama squeaks it out, she’s going to be Ms. Inevitability again. Thanks loads, New Hampshire.

Update: The Concord Monitor is projecting Clinton to be the winner.

Anything I write now might be obsolete by Wednesday morning, but such is opinionating. So here goes …

From today’s Observer:

The New Hampshire Democratic Party’s 100 Club dinner is a staid affair, attracting the main candidates as speakers in an act of shameless fundraising. But on Friday night extraordinary scenes unfolded there that captured the mood of a party suddenly filled with the desire to kick out its old guard.

Barack Obama was so mobbed by supporters that a security announcer begged people surging towards the stage to retake their seats. Many were chanting Obama’s new signature slogan: ‘Fired up! Let’s go!’

In stark contrast, Hillary Clinton had been booed twice. The first time when she seemed to borrow from Obama’s main theme of ‘change’. The second was when she made a veiled reference to her greater experience. ‘Who will be ready to lead from day one?’ she asked the 3,000-strong crowd. But she was forced to pause to let the resulting boos die down. A few weeks ago, such a spectacle would have been unthinkable.

Right now most polls are saying that Clinton and Obama are tied in New Hampshire. And you know that if she wins by even one vote on Tuesday she’ll be re-crowned “Ms. Inevitable.”

But I wonder if that “inevitability” shtick isn’t part of her problem. It sent a subliminal message to rank-and-file Dems that you’ll take what the party gives you, and you will like it. But what the party has been giving us in recent years — well, for a long time, actually — hasn’t been all that wonderful. We put up with it because the other guys are worse. Maybe what happened at the 100 Club dinner is a dawning realization that “Hey, we don’t have to put up with it! We can demand something different!”

It’s called “empowerment,” I believe.

Bob Herbert wrote yesterday:

The Clintons, especially, have seemed baffled by the winds of change. They mounted a peculiar argument against Senator Obama, acknowledging that voters wanted change but insisting that you can’t achieve change by doing things differently.

Ain’t it the truth? If you didn’t see this meltdown moment in last night’s debate, take a look at the transcript:

SEN. CLINTON: Wait a minute now, wait a minute. I’m going to respond to this because obviously — making change is not about what you believe. It’s not about a speech you make. It is about working hard. There are 7,000 kids in New Hampshire who have health care because I helped to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program. There’s 2,700 National Guard and Reserve members who have access to health care, because on a bipartisan basis, I pushed legislation through over the objection of the Pentagon, over the threat of a veto from President Bush.

I want to make change, but I’ve already made change. I will continue to make change. I’m not just running on a promise of change, I’m running on 35 years of change. I’m running on having taken on the drug companies and the health insurance companies, taking on the oil companies.

So, you know, I think it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change. And we don’t need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered. The best way to know what change I will produce is to look at the changes that I’ve already made.

To me, this exemplifies the whole problem with Senator Clinton. She probably has had some impact on some policies, but it hasn’t been good enough. Maybe she did take on the drug companies and the health insurance companies, but seems to me that the drug and health insurance companies won. If she honestly doesn’t see that, then I do not want her in the White House.

I’d be much more comfortable with her if she could admit efforts have fallen short, but if we could get a big Dem majority in Congress and have a Dem in the White House, we could accomplish something significant. But if she defines “significant” by what she’s already done, she doesn’t get it.

Frank Rich’s column today is all about how conventional wisdom fell apart in Iowa.

What was mostly forgotten in these errant narratives were the two largest elephants in the room: Iraq and George W. Bush. The conventional wisdom had it that both a tamped-down war and a lame-duck president were exiting so quickly from center stage that they were receding from the minds of voters. In truth, they were only receding from the minds of those covering those voters…

…It’s safe to assume that these same voters did not forget that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards enabled the Iraq fiasco. Or that Mr. Obama publicly opposed it. When Mrs. Clinton attacked Mr. Obama for his supposedly “irresponsible and frankly naïve” foreign policy ideas — seeking talks with enemies like Iran — she didn’t diminish him so much as remind voters of her own irresponsibility and naïveté about Mr. Bush’s Iraq scam in 2002.

Again, it’s a bit clumsy to run on “experience” if your track record is spotty.

As for Senator Obama, there’s no way to know if he’s for real or just packaging. At the Guardian, Armando Llorens (yeah, that Armando) expresses doubt that a President Obama would actually move the nation in a progressive direction.

But I don’t think that’s the way to look at it. It’s not as if America is sitting on its hands waiting for the next President to lead it somewhere. After having witnessed the colossal failure of “movement conservatism” I think the nation is poised to move in a more progressive direction. The question is, how will the next Congress and the next President respond to this? And I don’t think there is any way to predict that.

Historically, presidents in particular often turn out to be very different products from what was advertised. Often they are disappointing — I certainly think the Clinton Administration promised more than it delivered, except on the economy. Woodrow Wilson ran on a “he kept us out of war” platform, then sent troops to Europe.

On the other hand, in the 1860 campaign, Abraham Lincoln tried to defuse the secession crisis (and possibly pick up southern votes) by promising to support a constitutional amendment that would have protected slavery in the slave states. Many northern abolitionists refused to support Lincoln because he wasn’t tough enough on the slavery question. You might remember how that turned out.

Let’s face it — we’re buying a pig in a poke, no matter who wins.

There are only two things I can say with any certainty. One is that if a politician is tone-deaf to the nation’s mood as a candidate, winning an election is unlikely to improve his or her hearing.

And the other thing is that real, substantive change will be driven by the empowerment of the people, not from leadership in Washington.