GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: ...Before the votes were finally counted yesterday, President Clinton was asked why it was taking both Clintons to handle you in South Carolina. Here's how he responded to our David Wright.
[Video Clip:] BILL CLINTON: Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice in '84 and '88. And he ran a good campaign, and Senator Obama's run a good campaign here. He's run a good campaign everywhere.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The implication there is pretty clear: You're the Jesse Jackson of 2008.
OBAMA: Well, you know, Jesse Jackson ran historic races in 1984 and 1988, and there's no doubt that that set a precedent for African Americans running for the highest office in the land. But, you know, that was 20 years ago, George. And I think that what we saw in this election was a shift in South Carolina that I think speaks extraordinarily well, not just for folks in the South, but all across the country. I think people want change. I think they want to get beyond some of the racial politics that, you know, has been so dominant in the past. We're very encouraged as we go to the February 5th states.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think President Clinton was engaging in racial politics there?
OBAMA: Well, you know, I think that that's his frame of reference was, the Jesse Jackson races. That's when, you know, he was active and involved and watching what was going to take place in South Carolina. I think that a lot of South Carolinians looked at it through a different lens...
STEPHANOPOULOS: But several in the Clinton camp say that it was your campaign that was playing the race card throughout this primary. They point to Dick Harpootlian, one of your major supporters in South Carolina, who said that the Clinton campaign was reminiscent of Lee Atwater. They point to the comments of one of your top advisers, Steve Hildebrand, who said that the Clintons have always put people in a box; [that] they look at everything through racial lines, gender lines, geographic lines; [that] they tend to segment people. They say that it was your campaign playing the race card.
OBAMA: George, I'm not going to continue sort of the tit-for-tat. I think that the results yesterday spoke for themselves, that people wanted to move beyond some of these old arguments, and they want to look forward to figure out how we pull the country together and move forward, and that's what we're going to do during the remainder of this campaign.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: You also said that you're up against the idea that it's acceptable to say anything or do anything. Is that what you think the Clintons were doing in South Carolina? And you also used the word demonize there. Were they trying to demonize you?
OBAMA: No, I don't think they were trying to demonize me, but I do think that there is a certain brand of politics that we've become accustomed to, and that the Republican Party had perfected and was often directed against the Clintons, but that all of us had become complicit in, where we basically think anything is fair game.