Actually, the headline was written and posted long before the polls were scheduled to close. But I thought I might as well join the conventional wisdom early. Feel free to add election commentary here as the evening wears on.

South Carolina, like all states that have voted so far, seems to be showing greater enthusiasm for Democratic candidates than in previous years, if turnout means anything. So if the candidates don’t terminally mutilate each other by November, that STILL could be good news. Big turnout is a national story.

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UPDATE: You know by now it was a 2-1, racially pronounced whuppin’ that Obama laid on Clinton. Mr. Clinton spoke in Missouri, congratulated Obama and launched into a stemwinder on policy specifics. Those speeches have been widely derided by media in the past — and it was again tonight — but polls in years past showed they worked much better with average voters, who do seem to care about health care, AIDS, the economy, etc. In this race? Who knows? One wonders if there could be a Frank White moment for the Clintons. An apology for overheated rhetoric, an acceptance of the South Carolina vote as a knuckle-rap for a bad boy and a changed tenor for the future. We’ll see. Florida, though it doesn’t matter as far as delegates are concerned, now matters.

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