Obama wins in South Carolina

Here's the post I did for the Registers Horserace'08 blog on Saturday night after Barack Obama trounced Hillary Clinton, getting an absolute majority. I also have to say that listening to his victory speech almost made me appreciate Obama as an orator, which quite frankly had eluded me until then. But his speech had a cadence and rythm, a sense of when to pause and when to continue, that almost made one believe that this was the guy to bring about change (although the nature of the change was still kinda vague.

Andrew Sullivan, who confesses that he's rather enchanted with Barack, wrote that he had listened to dozens of Obama speeches, and this was the best he's heard. Well, maybe that's it, I found myself somewhat impressed by the best. But still only somewhat impressed. I think most pundits have pretty low standards for public speaking. Barack is good, but he's not that good.

I do think it's interesting that Ted Kennedy has endorsed Obama, along with Caroline. It suggests sttrongly that plenty of Democrats are fed up with Billary, and that there is a Democratic tradition that preceded the Clintons that they'd like to preserve. Fascinating that so many Demcrats and liberals are letting loose on the Clintons (Frank Rich at the NYT is almost apoplectic, though that's hardly untypical) now that they've seen Bubba exercising his campaign skills on a Democrat instead of on Republicans