Jonathan V. Last reports from South Carolina on Obama's victory:
[W]hat is troubling about tonight is that Obama was unwilling to tell people an obvious truth: that while white voters have supported him in great numbers (elsewhere, if not in South Carolina), black voters have so far been unwilling to support his white opponents. Again, that's not his fault; and it may not even mean anything significant. But it surely means something that Obama was so bent on denying this fact that he turned his victory speech into an attempt to convince voters of something obviously untrue. One of Obama's frequent promises in his stump speech is that he is willing to tell voters hard truths, even if they don't want to hear it. That wasn't the case tonight.
More at the Campaign Standard from the Cardinal. I just watched the victory speech, too, and it did not give me "goose-pimples" as it did the female Democratic strategist on Fox. Jonathan says he didn't tell voters the hard truths tonight, and while he is referring specifically to the electoral politics of Obama's victory, I think that is true in a larger sense as well. Obama promised to give something to everybody and called it sacrifice. He's going to give you health care, help with your mortgage, and help to pay for college. He's going to bring the troops home so they can be with their children they've never seen before. And you can move this country beyond the racial problems that have plagued it since before its founding--just by voting Obama. It's a striking contrast with the McCain campaign's message: your job's not coming back, we'll try and get you into a community college, and we're going to be in Iraq for the next hundred years. And yet McCain is out in front while Obama plays the underdog. Go figure. Update: Another perspective on the Obama speech from Peter Wehner--but the same conclusion: Obama would be a much more formidable opponent in the general election.