"Obama is trying to make transformational changes. He's trying to pass health care. He's trying to do stuff that Democrats haven't been able to get done since Harry Truman," Democratic strategist Phil Noble added. "For there not to be knives drawn, fistfights in the streets, is pretty damn good."

"The problem is that politics, greed and shortsighted politicians are a bigger barrier than the technical barriers," says Phil Noble, president of the South Carolina New Democrats.

“The most important issue to the future of South Carolina is education, and Jim knows the most about educational problems we face in this state. He deals with it every day,” said Phil Noble, president of the S.C. New Democrats, a group that has not endorsed a candidate.

"The Republican Party in South Carolina is well steeped in the dark arts of racial politics and I think that Obama's election is particularly galling to some in that party," said Phil Noble, head of the South Carolina New Democrats, an independent reform group. "There are many in that party for whom simply the idea, much less the reality, of a black president is very painful."

Phil Noble, a Charleston resident and head of the South Carolina New Democrats, says his party must field a vibrant, viable, exciting alternative to the Republicans or suffer defeat again. “You can’t beat something with nothing,” Noble says. “What Sanford has done is accelerated a real trend that has been developing over the last few years that opens the door for a Democratic victory. It doesn’t ensure it, but it opens the door for it.”

"Obama was able to articulate a desire for change and a frustration with traditional politics on a national level, and people responded," Noble said. "I believe there is even greater frustration and even more pent-up desire for change here in South Carolina. The same dynamic that brought about Obama's success nationally is alive and well in South Carolina and going to do the same thing here."