The first-in-the-South Democratic presidential primary will be held in South Carolina on Saturday. Polls show that Sen. Barack Obama has a double digit lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton. African Americans, who make up half of Democratic voters, overwhelmingly support Obama, 65 percent to Clinton's 16 percent.

There is, however, a racial divide in voters' preferences. Obama trails both Clinton and John Edwards among white voters. While Obama will likely win the primary without significant white support, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. He will have won the battle but lost the war against morphing into the "black presidential candidate."

Obama would follow in the path blazed by another black presidential candidate, Jesse Jackson, who won the South Carolina primary in 1984 and 1988. And like Obama in Iowa, Jackson won caucuses in a virtually all-white state, Vermont.

So, get ready.

I'm on my way to Columbia, where I'll be blogging from the Bad As* Coffee Company. It seems like an appropriate venue since most of my posts will focus on a bad brother.