Well goddamit, if Obama has a supporter in this damn state, I’m yet to find one. The polls, having coming back into sensible numbers, still give Barack a 10 to 20 point lead over Hils in the state that, according to its most recent multi-volume history, had to be reinvaded twice in the 1860s before it would accept that the Civil War – or the War of Southern Independence as some call it here – was even lost.

On the cool verandah of the Planters Bar in the heritage district – an area so meticulously restored that every last trace of history has been driven from it – though, there’s no Hillary supporters. No ‘Bama supporters neither. It’s wall to wall GOP. Fred, a smoothly turned out lawyer taking a long lunch which I’d like to say was hush puppies, but was actually a pannini, explained: “thyare’s three main eesshues fur me [i’ll dispense with the accent] in this fight, and, sir, they’re all immigration.” Dean, his lunch companion, was more forthright about the “damn #/&%b coming in and %&##/&” … you get the picture.

Thus South Carolina, so the South. Seeing itself as on the frontline of global labour shift, thanks to the Mexican border, many southern whites are attracted to notions of “building the wall” for a mixture of purportedly rational economic reasons – but also atavistic cultural-historical ones. And if all else were well that would deliver a bushel of support to the Republicans, but the state is also criss-crossed with other, more general issues.

One is the war, for South Carolina is the home not only of The Citadel – the mildly creepy military academy whose tortured cadets can be seen on endless full-pack runs around the park at lunchtime – but also a vast web of other bases, retired vets etc. It would be foolish to believe, at this late stage, that they would be straight down the line pro-war – given the disaster it has become, many people closer to the firing line may be quietly voting against.

But the other factor that’s really hit has been the sub-prime crisis. Why? Because the group that was the greatest target for sub-prime selling were low single income families, black people and particularly black women – and that’s about 75% of the damn state. The reposessions have been substantial, like nothing you will have seen in Australia until about, ohhhh, October of this year.

John Edwards should be benefitting from this, but free-mediawise the guy can’t get arrested. As his engaging advisor ‘Mudcat’ Saunders (think Hunter Thompson as played by Paul Newman) noted “if John Edwards discovered a cure for diabetes tomorrow, the press would report Hillary Clinton had worked against diabetes for thirty five years and Barack Obama would tell us of the inspiring diabetes sufferers who gave him HOPE for CHANGE.”

Yet though having the strongest policies, Edwards seems just as willing to play into the interminable politics of experience and emotion, running endless ads about growing up amongst millworkers etc. Last night’s interminable Nevada MSNBC democratic confrontation was that rare thing, a debate without a winner.

Obama sounded like someone going for a middlemanagement position at Officeworks (“my greatest weakness would be…”), Hills sounded like Reese Witherspoon from Election (“I would like to commend [leadership group] The One Hundred Black Men of America”) and Edwards was on message (“my father worked in a mill as I may have mentioned”).

What the debate made clear was an appreciation of the scale of problems faced – a nation overextended in wars, and with deep structural problems at home – was seemingly unmatched by an ability to sum it up in oratory that was not rhetoric or Chicken Soup For The Cable-Viewers’ Soul.

That role – Mr Jesus Fixit – is one Mitt Romney is hoping to fill, after beating McCain in Michigan 40% to 30%. He would want to, having spent scads of money in his hometown. Still the 10% win is more than mere keeping his head above water, but it now means that a different Republican has won each primary so far – and if Giuliani takes Florida, which is the first state he’s really campaigning in, and Huckabee takes SC, then confusion will be total.

As the possibility of a Democratic floor fight recedes, a brokered Republican convention is becoming a mouthwatering possibility. Or will McCain become the compromise candidate? Signs are mixed. The boys at the Planters want Huckabee, know they won’t get him, would settle for Romney. And McCain? ‘McCain? Naww. If we wanted a Democrat we’d vote for a Democrat.’

Eyes down for a full house in Nevada and then its Fort Sumter the rematch.