Columbia, SC — President Joe Biden hopes to win South Carolina's Democratic primary on Saturday to validate a new lineup he championed to empower Black voters who revived his 2020 campaign.
Biden outperforms Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson. However, the long and often difficult process that saw the Democratic National Committee formally swap Iowa with South Carolina in its presidential primary schedule makes it notable.
Biden proposed a schedule starting in South Carolina to involve more voters of color in the Democratic presidential nomination. Republicans rule the state, yet 26% are Black.
“South Carolina, you are the first primary in the nation and President Biden and I are counting on you,” Harris said Friday at historically Black South Carolina State in Orangeburg, after the president and first wife Jill Biden had previously campaigned there. a large 2020 general election survey, found that 9 in 10 Black voters favored Biden.
Biden wanted South Carolina to start, then Nevada three days later. The huge and varied swing state of Michigan's Democratic primary is moved to Feb. 27 before Super Tuesday on March 5. After losing in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, Biden won the 2020 Democratic primary in South Carolina.
After serving as second to Barack Obama, many Black Democrats in South Carolina still support Biden. Jim Clyburn, the state's senior Democrat and one of Congress' most important Black leaders, remains a Biden buddy.
At the Democratic Party of South Carolina's “First-in-the-Nation” celebratory luncheon last weekend, Biden remarked, “I wouldn't be here without the Democratic voters of South Carolina, and that's a fact “You made me president.” The DNC spent six figures on state and Nevada ads to promote Black and Latino voter excitement for the president. Nevada has 30% Latinos.
Black voters contacted during the early voting period cited Biden's advocacy of abortion rights and appointment of Black jurists and other minorities to federal courts as reasons for supporting him. Some repeated Biden's worries that former President Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, would imperil democracy by claiming the 2020 vote was stolen.
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