Biden wins South Carolina, hopes for Super Tuesday momentum
COLUMBIA, S.C. – Joe Biden scored a convincing victory in South Carolina’s Democratic primary on Saturday, riding a wave of African American support and ending progressive rival Bernie Sanders’ winning streak.
The Vermont senator claimed second place, though his loss gave a momentary respite to anxious establishment Democrats who feared the self-described democratic socialist would finish February with four consecutive top finishes.
Biden’s win came at a do-or-die moment in his 2020 bid as the moderate Democrat bounced back from underwhelming performances in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. The race pivots immediately to a new phase when 14 “Super Tuesday” states take the campaign nationwide early this week.
Biden’s allies almost immediately cast the South Carolina victory as proof he should stand as the clear alternative to Sanders.
Sanders congratulated Biden on his first win and said it was nothing for his own supporters to worry about.
“Tonight, we did not win in South Carolina. That will not be the only defeat. A lot of states in this country. Nobody wins them all,” he told a cheering crowd in Virginia, one of 14 states to vote next week. “Now we enter Super Tuesday.”
The South Carolina primary was the first major test of the candidates’ appeal among black voters. And while it gave the 77-year-old Biden a win when he most needed it, he must still prove he has the financial and organizational resources to dramatically expand his campaign in the next 72 hours. He will also be under pressure to rely on his decades-long relationships with party leaders to create a new sense of inevitability around his candidacy.
The Associated Press declared Biden the winner at 7 p.m. EST, just after the polls closed in South Carolina. The AP based the call on data from AP VoteCast, a survey of the electorate conducted for the AP by NORC at the University of Chicago. The survey showed a convincing win for Biden.
Even before news of Biden’s win was declared, Mike Bloomberg announced his own plan to deliver a three-minute prime-time address Sunday night on two television networks. He didn’t say how much he paid for the air time, which is unprecedented in recent decades.
Bloomberg’s campaign privately acknowledged Biden was likely to get a bump in momentum out of his South Carolina win, but they still believe Bloomberg can win in a handful of states that vote on Super Tuesday, including Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Virginia and North Carolina.
And Sanders was already peeking ahead to Super Tuesday as well, betting he can amass an insurmountable delegate lead at that point. After two consecutive victories and a tie for the lead in Iowa, the 78-year-old Vermont senator’s confidence is surging.
Sanders was spending the lead-up to Super Tuesday campaigning in the home states of two major Democratic rivals, betting he can score a double knockout blow – or at least limit the size of their victories.
In a power play, Sanders hosted a midday rally Saturday in downtown Boston, campaigning in the heart of liberal ally Elizabeth Warren’s political turf. Addressing a crowd of thousands on the Boston Common, Sanders said his success in the Democratic primary means “the establishment is getting very nervous” – but he never predicted victory in South Carolina.
On the eve of Super Tuesday, Sanders will host a concert in Minnesota, where home-state Sen. Amy Klobuchar is looking for her first win.
Sanders’ senior adviser Jeff Weaver was among the staffers dispatched to California on Saturday. He said Sanders is aggressively hunting for delegates, noting that their campaign’s experience during the 2016 primary against Hillary Clinton taught them any candidate who finishes Super Tuesday with a significant delegate advantage will be difficult to catch.
“I’m confident we’re going to do very, very well across the country,“ Weaver said of the coming days. He also sought to downplay the importance of South Carolina, where Biden was “expected to win.”