Barack Obama's rout of Hillary Clinton in Saturday's South Carolina Democratic primary wasn't just a stunning victory -- it was a bolt of electricity that fired up his campaigns in delegate-rich California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and 18 other states where he hopes to duplicate that feat on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.
Obama, with the 25 delegates he received by winning the South Carolina contest, is beating Clinton in the state delegate count, with 63 to her 48. Clinton leads in the superdelgate category, and now has 201 of them, compared to Obama's 179.
The South Carolina victory -- which set a record for the state's Democratic primaries, with over 520,000 ballots and nearly double the 2004 total -- has convinced some Obama supporters that he'll defeat Clinton in enough Feb. 5 primaries and caucuses to win the ultimate prizes: The presidential nomination this summer and the White House in November.
A total of 2,025 delegates are needed to win the party's nomination. On Super Tuesday, 1,688 delegates from 22 states will be in play -- 441 of them from California alone.
"We're going to write a new chapter in the South, and we're going to write a new chapter in American history," Obama told 9,000 cheering supporters Sunday morning at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, less than 24 hours after demonstrating his growing appeal to voters in nearly every demographic category.
According to several news reports, he won 52 percent of the votes cast in South Carolina by non-blacks and 40 percent of the votes of people under 30.
In Los Angeles, shortly after Obama's South Carolina victory, BlackAmericaWeb.com interviewed a group of his California supporters to assess their views of the impact it could have here, statewide and nationally.
"The message from South Carolina to everybody -- people who like Obama, those who were and still are afraid to vote for him and cynics too -- is 'Yes, we can,'” said former city councilman Nate Holden. Nationwide, Holden predicted, "the South Carolina victory should make the race much more competitive."
Dr. Louis C. Simpson, a psychiatrist, said he's contributed the maximum amount to Obama's campaign because "we're proud of him. He elevates us to another level."
Moreover, the group, in discussing the potential impact the South Carolina victory carries for Obama here and throughout the nation, agreed on several key points, including their belief that it strengthens his efforts everywhere.
"I believe he'll get a bump of at least five percentage points in the polls and perhaps as many as 10," Simpson said. He noted the positive effects of endorsements by two influential newspapers, the San Jose Mercury News and San Francisco Chronicle.
Amanda Hayes, an Obama precinct captain, said Obama's victory "will open up the Democratic primaries and make it much more likely that he'll win in California on Feb 5."
According to Obama supporter Arthur Amy, "it makes people, especially people of color, see that they have a voice and that together, we do make a difference." Fellow Obama backer Biniam Kibreab added that "if he could win in South Carolina, then he can surely win in California where liberals are the majority."
Allen Gambrell, a commercial real estate consultant, said his parents told him that the "victory was quite significant for us as a people." His parents also told him, Gambrell said, "that they "got a tingling feeling from Obama's victory that they hadn't felt since the civil rights movement was at its peak."
A growing number of political pundits out West say Obama's campaign has begun wooing blacks who only months ago believed his candidacy was a waste of energy and resources, attesting that, during their lifetime, an African-American family would never be able to call the White House their home.
Extensive BlackAmericaWeb.com interviews with political consultants, campaign operatives, elected officials, clergy and citizens over a two-week period revealed a deep level of support for the Illinois senator noted for his incandescent smile and effervescent spirit. Many of them have predicted that Obama will out-poll New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, his strongest primary opponent, among California blacks in February.
Prominent among them is Roderick Wright, an Obama supporter, former state assemblyman and district director for influential Rep. Maxine Waters. "Based on my conversations with political leaders and voters, Obama will probably take between 60 and 70 percent of Los Angeles' black vote," Wright said.
Wright, a candidate for state senate, was an advance and events coordinator for Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns. "Obama's is the first presidential campaign since then in which I've seen so many blacks so fired up by the opportunity to elect a president," Wright said.
Throughout the state, according to political experts and longtime observers, Obama's message of hope and change has transfixed adult blacks and drawn large segments of youth who were previously disengaged from the political process. An estimated 18 percent of the state's Democratic primary voters are African-American. Blacks then have the power to decide very close, if not skin-tight elections, which the upcoming contest may very well be.
In some statewide polls, Obama has narrowed Clinton's once formidable lead of more than 20 points to single digits, an Obama spokesman told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Nowhere in California has Obama's message resonated among blacks more convincingly than in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, where most of the state's black population resides.
On the days immediately following Obama's Jan. 3 victory in the Iowa caucuses, "our phones began ringing off the hook with calls from African-Americans who want to volunteer in the campaign," said Robert Cole, Obama's statewide director of African-American outreach, who is based in Los Angeles. "Others began walking in off the street to ask what they could do to help."
A training session in South Central Los Angeles, the city's most populous black region, "drew more than 200 people," Cole said.
Jewett Walker, one of the state's most respected political consultants, told BlackAmericaWeb.com that "blacks continue to move toward Obama because he brings a new level of excitement to the race."
One striking example of that excitement was the support thrown to Obama last week by Los Angeles' preeminent black political organization, the New Frontier Democratic Club. Its members voted overwhelmingly to endorse Obama. The vote was 48 for Obama, three for Clinton, two for John Edwards and one for Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who has withdrawn from the race.
Since early last fall, Obama has been busy securing the endorsements of a large group of the state's black elected officials, including all but one member of the Black Legislative Caucus. Other important endorsements garnered by Obama include that of one of the state's most powerful African-American elected officials, Los Angeles' Second District Supervisor Yvonne Braithwaite Burke.
In an interview last week, Burke spoke optimistically of Obama's effect on virtually every demographic voting group, in addition to his impact on African Americans. "For far too long, our community's political response has been lethargic, but now, in Barack Obama, we have a candidate who's exciting everybody -- young, old, blacks, whites, Latino, Asians," she told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Burke predicted that Obama "will get most of the black vote because the votes cast for him in Iowa and New Hampshire gave African-Americans a good reason to believe he'll win and that his candidacy is not just a fairy tale." Burke, who said she plans on making the maximum contribution to Obama and support his other fundraising efforts as well, believes "he has a good chance of winning the primary."
"I think a lot of the Clintons," Burke said, "but this time, there are some overriding issues (of great significance to blacks and everyone), and he is the kind of person I can support."
Burke's reasoning was similar to that of Karen Bass, the California Assembly majority leader who was also one of Obama's earliest African-American advocates.
Bass, who said she was asked to chair California's African-Americans for Obama Committee last summer, "accepted the offer because I want to be a part of history."
Obama's "early contributions as a community organizer and ability to inspire youth who've become so cynical also played a role," she told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "Obama began as a community organizer just as I did, has a long commitment to fighting for social justice and has a very serious agenda for urban America."
Rev. Dr. Norman S. Johnson, a former executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Los Angeles, explained his support for Obama as well.
"After mulling over my conversations with other religious leaders and our agreement that we would not endorse a candidate based on symbolism, I decided to support him," Johnson told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "My journey toward him did not take place overnight. I am impressed by his sense of history, emphasis on bringing people together and message based on hope, which was spoken in language everybody can understand."
In contrast to Burke, Waters, another powerful political figure, has said she is "undecided" but may endorse either Obama or Clinton before the Feb. 5 primary. Diane Watson, a political veteran whose representation as a community leader, state senator and congresswoman spans nearly four decades, is supporting Clinton. So is Laura Richardson, the newest member of California's black Congressional delegation. Northern California Rep. Barbara Lee is an Obama supporter, however.
But none of the Clinton supporters, individually or collectively, appear to have carried the New York senator's message with as much zeal and volume as Obama's African-American endorsers.
Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad, an author, college professor and founder of the Urban Issues Forum of Greater Los Angeles, said Obama's support among blacks now extends to "the kinds of people who traditionally play it safe, but have now lined up behind Obama because his campaign has demonstrated that he has legs."
Samad, who is also a columnist for The Black Commentator, said that "Obama's supporters include people representing a broad range of ideas and positions who are savvy politicians and others who simply want political and economic change."
Obama's success among blacks, Walker said, is partially due to the historic under-presentation blacks suffer in virtual every sphere dimension of the nation's life and culture. "Every race wants to cheer for one of their own, especially in our case, since we're so underrepresented, except in athletics and entertainment," Walker said. Obama's candidacy, he offered, "has achieved a very important yet elusive goal for blacks, which is to excite young people and give them a reason to become involved in the political process."
Walker said he understands "why some well-known blacks have endorsed Obama, while others are supporting Clinton and Edwards. There's a certain level of pragmatism involved in their decisions. In the event that the presidential slipper doesn't fit Obama, they don't want to be caught at the wrong party."
These pragmatists, Walker said, "understand that blacks tend to put all our eggs in one basket so when that basket is tipped over, we're all in bad shape together."
Seemingly unconcerned about that possibility are Obama's California campaign contributors.
According to Kerman Maddox, a popular political consultant whom the Illinois senator asked to become a member of his finance committee, "we've been able to raise a ton of money."
While Maddox had no precise figure for the total number of contributions by black Californians for Obama, he said the amount "exceeds the donations from African-Americans in New York, Washington, D.C., or even Chicago." Maddox said the amount is also more than the figure raised so far in any state, including Illinois, the senator's home turf.
One event in a Pasadena home, said Maddox, "brought in $200,000 in March, while another netted $100,000 in the fall and additional ones" in Los Angeles' tony Hancock Park section matched that amount, he said. A substantial portion of the $3 million raised by Oprah Winfrey in September at her Santa Barbara estate was contributed by blacks, Maddox said.
Now, with Obama's smashing South Carolina surge, a number of political observers say more African-American pockets -- and those of other groups too -- will open even more for his campaign in the days and weeks immediately ahead.
