National media coverage of the S.C. Democratic primary

A look at how the national media are covering the South Carolina Democratic primary:

• Sharpton and race

The square in front of the South Carolina state Capitol, on Martin Luther King Day, is the most morally simple place in America.

The Confederate flag flies there, near a monument to rebel soldiers who, “faithful to the teachings of their fathers ... glorified a fallen cause.”

... In fact, South Carolina’s flag is an old (Al) Sharpton reliable. He probably wishes there were one in every primary state.

The flag carries him back to a simpler time. Sharpton often says his race-based candidacy is “about right and wrong, not black and white.”

But he knows full well that issues of American racial morality are far more nuanced than they used to be.

— New York Daily News

• Orangeburg voters

Assumptions about black voters — that they’re more liberal and prefer to vote for blacks, that they care most about affirmative action and race relations — often don’t hold up here.

Orangeburg’s black electorate has many of the same economic and security concerns as other voters, can be just as conservative on social issues as Republican neighbors and has so far split its loyalties among the seven Democrats running for president.

Winning votes in this city is important, and difficult.

— San Jose Mercury News

• Kingmaker Clyburn

The wooing of (U.S. Rep. Jim) Clyburn reflects some stubborn realities of the presidential campaign in South Carolina, which is shaping up to be a critical battleground as the first state in the South — and the first with a significant minority population — to cast ballots this primary season.

No one — including Edwards, who grew up here — has locked up this crucial state.

Despite all the hours candidates have spent at Baptist churches and meeting with community organizers, none of the contenders has found a way to emerge as the consensus choice of black voters.

— The Boston Globe

• ‘God and flag’

Sometime this week, would-be Democratic presidents will travel the misery circuit of South Carolina, barnstorming selected small towns and cities and seizing on the campaign red meat of abandoned textile mills, uninsured families, bedrock poverty, rising unemployment and the steady erosion of manufacturing jobs.

But a trip by any presidential aspirant to South Carolina should include a pause at the 32-ton bronze statue of the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, the daunting symbol of conservative political reality that governs much of the South and is an imposing obstacle to Democratic plans for the White House.

— The Chicago Tribune

• Home cooking

(John) Edwards, seen as a regional candidate until his surprise second-place finish in Iowa, has concentrated heavily on this state from the start.

The consensus among politicians and pundits here is that his candidacy might not survive a loss on Feb. 3.

Certainly, it is unlikely that both he and (Wesley) Clark, who has made much of his Arkansas origins, will emerge from the South Carolina test in a tenable position for later primaries.

— The New York Times

• Voters awaken

With South Carolina’s Feb. 3 primary approaching, voters in this state seem to have awakened.

After six months of campaigning by the candidates, four months of their television ads and a month of intensifying coverage leading up to last Monday’s Iowa caucuses and Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, they seem ready for the TV close-ups that will come when the Palmetto State holds the South’s first presidential primary of the 2004 election cycle.

— The Washington Post