The Masters of Spin

Just two months ago, the polls in South Carolina showed Hillary Clinton cruising to an easy victory:

Clinton: 41%
Obama: 27%
Edwards: 13%

Now, the polls show Obama with a decisive lead:

Obama: 38.4%
Clinton: 26.6%
Edwards: 19.6%

So...how do you spin to your advantage what's likely to be a big defeat when it looked like an easy victory just a few months ago? Well, you get Bill Clinton to utter some complete nonsense:

On Wednesday, Bill Clinton told voters that "people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here," and that Obama's lead in a heavily black electorate is "understandable because people are proud when someone who they identify with emerges for the first time."

That's funny. Bill wasn't saying that Hillary didn't have a chance in South Carolina a couple of months ago.

But of course, all of this is just the Clinton's clever attempt to spin what looks like a certain defeat. They spent millions in South Carolina and Bill Clinton has been camped out there for weeks. They never wrote the state off and Hillary was campaigning there for the last several days.

But they are the masters at this. They took a 2% margin of victory in New Hampshire and turned it into a "stunning upset". Imagine that, who would have thought that Hillary Clinton winning New Hampshire would be a stunning upset 6 months ago?

And remember when Bill turned an 8% point loss to Paul Tsongas in the 1992 New Hampshire primary into his absurd "comeback kid"? Only the Clintons can pull this sort of thing off and the media is likely to buy whatever narrative they come up with in South Carolina to make it seem like a victory.