Barack Obama dismissed Tuesday’s Florida primary as a “beauty contest,” but Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory provided ugly omens for his quest to build a broad multi-racial coalition to defeat her on February 5.Clinton won 50 per cent to Obama’s 33 per cent, with John Edwards garnering 14 per cent, with 76 per cent of the votes counted. As in South Carolina and Nevada, the results divided sharply along racial and ethnic lines, with Clinton solidly supported by whites and Hispanics, while Obama benefitted from overwhelming backing from African-American voters.All Democrats honoured a pledge not to campaign here after the national party stripped the state of its delegates for scheduling the contest ahead of next week’s Super Tuesday primary.But Clinton curried favour with state Democrats by ordering her delegates to vote for their reinstatement at this summer’s Denver convention. Tuesday night, she cited heavy turnout as proof of a major victory. Obama called the primary a “beauty contest,” adding, “None of us campaigned there, so people have no idea what the respective candidates stand for.”The same ethnic voting patterns that helped Obama win in the South Carolina primary, boomeranged on him in Florida.
