Hillary's response to this weekends three state Double O onslaught was to deploy Maya Angelou via radio in South Carolina, to counter the Obama/Oprah offensive. But I don't think that is hardly going to cut it. Obama made major inroads into South Carolina this weekend. 30,000 people attended the SC rally with Oprah. The Obama campaign was very shrewd and demonstrated a clear understanding of their business. Oprah's job was to fill the seats and make the pitch. Obama and his team's job was to close the sale and do the conversions. They obtained the voter information for everyone who attended and they were making 65,000 phones calls today to follow up with each every one. Without a doubt, he in one weekend struck deep and hard into the SC electorate, drawing a crowd of mostly women, many of them African American, a segment he was losing ground with. I suspect he made up some of that ground and that his rallies this weekend have given him an even firmer foothold on SC territory.Oprah was extremely effective in directly attacking the idea that Hillary is more experienced and seasoned than Obama. She did a great job of positioning Obama as the candidate of change vs. Hillary. Hillary's response with radio ads from Maya to my mind betrays her weak point: she is the establishment candidate. For an electorate interested in change, she is not the candidate. Many of her endorsements reflect her establishment status (Andrew Young, Maya Anjelou, Quincy Jones etc.). The Obama campaign is getting better at painting her in this way. So this weekend is a major victory in the election war.
Hillary's response with the Maya Angelou ads can certainly be considered only part of her response. She has a highly organized campaign and organization wins elections. She's smart and she's ruthless and not without weapons of her own, such as Bill and plenty of money too.
Obama is picking up the big mo. He's challenging her in Iowa, competing in New Hampshire and may perhaps have generated momentum in SC. He's fighting an intense three state war for the early primary states and as the primaries get closer, the gloves are coming off. Lets get ready to ruuummmbbblleee!
