Expert: Sharpton Should Quit Unless...
by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Al Sharpton, who won less than half of the Black votes cast for Sen. John Edwards in the South Carolina Democratic primary and was almost trounced 2-to-1 among African-American voters by runner-up John Kerry, should either come up with a bold new strategy or get out of the presidential race, says one of America’s most respected political scientists.

“South Carolina ought to be a wake-up call because that’s the biggest. This was the first southern state he’s faced. This was probably the best chance he’s had to pick up any delegates. He should pull out,” says Ron Walters, University of Maryland political science professor and adviser to Jesse Jackson during his two presidential runs.

Things improved slightly for Sharpton last Saturday.

In Michigan, he tied for fourth-place with Wesley Clark, with 7 percent of the vote. Kerry won the caucus with 52 percent, following by Howard Dean with 17 percent and John Edwards at 14 percent. Dennis Kucinich came in last-place with 3 percent of the Democratic vote. As expected, Sharpton did not pick up any delegates over the weekend in Washington state or Maine.

On Tuesday, Sharpton came in fifth in both Virginia (3 percent) and Tennessee (2 percent).

In order to clinch the Democratic nomination, a candidate needs to win 2,162 delegates. So far, Kerry leads the field with 473, followed by Dean with 182 and Edwards with 182. Sharpton has 12 and Kucinich has two.

Still, Sharpton was predicting that he’d remain in the campaign to the end and go into the convention with 300 to 400 delegates, an extremely optimistic projection, given his performance so far.